


Starry nights and sunny skies

by Mei (Ima1)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Allie the adorable elf, Bisexual Harry Potter, F/M, Hanh the matchmaking snake, Post-War, Time Travel, Wandless Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:00:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 50,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25129696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ima1/pseuds/Mei
Summary: Going back in time was meant to be relatively easy. A sacrifice, but by all means not a big one. Instead, Harry finds himself crossing paths with a Narcissa Black who is so far from what he’d expected that he wonders if he arrived at a different universe rather than a different time.The answer, of course, is that one should never doubt Hermione’s spellcasting abilities. Which just might mean that his life is in for some surreal changes.Also, Harry might possibly never recover from having Voldemort flirt with him.
Relationships: Narcissa Black Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 108
Kudos: 411





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Helloo :) my brain has decided to go on a rare pair trip so here this is, fifty thousand words of Harry/Narcissa.
> 
> I hope you enjoy, and let me know what you think <3

When Harry feels the solid ground under his feet and the sudden quietness of the room, he lets out a deep breath.

Hermione had been quite sure that it would work, of course, but it is still a relief to have concrete proof of her absolute brilliance. Not that he would ever voice this moment of doubt to her.

Looking around, there’s no question that it is indeed the same room he’d been in just seconds before. The furniture is the same, though it somehow feels less homey. When Harry had first come to this house, seemingly abandoned for over twenty years, he’d been surprised at just how inviting it felt. Like someone had put their own personal touch to it, one which resonated deep inside him.

Now it has the peculiar effect of feeling just slightly _off_. There are pictures on the wall, which hadn’t been the case before, but Harry’s not sure that that’s the issue.

Shrugging the thought off, he casts a _Tempus_ spell which tells him it’s 00:01 a.m., January 1st, 1975.

He smiles. So far, at least, his mission has been successful.

Forging a fake identity thirty years into the future and making sure that it sticks thirty years into the past is certainly no small feat — for which Harry is ever so glad that that task also fell to Hermione’s wonderful genius.

He breathes another sigh in relief when he steps into Gringotts to get access to his vault and the blood test proves he is, indeed, Harry Jonas Hawthorne. Single heir to the family vaults due to his father’s untimely death at the hands of a particularly vicious Nundu while they’d been away in Uganda, where Harry graduated as a proud alumnus of Uagadou School of Magic.

Harry is very grateful for Draco’s insistence that if they were going to come up with this fantastical story, then Harry should at least have the forethought to learn everything he could about Uagadou, life in Uganda, and, especially, wandless magic, which is their main focus for learning magic there.

He might have grumbled a bit (a lot), and complained about all the extra studying he had to do on top of his usual workload a bit (a _lot_ lot), but he does send a silent thanks to future-Draco when the first person to ask him where he went to school, upon learning about it, eagerly asks him for a demonstration on wandless magic which is just, “Oh so fascinating, they should really teach that at Hogwarts”. Harry is inclined to agree, if only so that he wouldn’t have had to spend an extra year and a half killing himself over it.

Once the right people have learned about his skills, Harry casually applies for a consulting job at the Ministry at the incentive of one of his new acquaintances. When he gets an owl back after the interview to ask him to go to the Ministry, level nine, Harry smiles.

Their plan was coming along just swimmingly.

* * *

Harry has to reluctantly concede that being an Unspeakable in the division of Life and Death of the Department of Mysteries is much less stressing — and much more interesting — than being an Auror.

There’s the whole not running after bad guys thing, which can get quickly annoying. Also, the paperwork goes more along the lines of ‘Today I tried to research. I wasn’t so successful,’ rather than the pages and pages he normally has to write as an Auror about every single detail on the cases. He thinks that both Hermione and Draco, the _actual_ Unspeakables, might have something to say about his work method, but they’re not even thought processes in their parents’ lives yet, so Harry cheerfully keeps at it.

Besides, he does like to think he brings a certain _je ne sais quoi_ to the division, what with his whole dying and coming back to life experience.

Less fun is perhaps working so closely with the Veil and having to bury a lot of memories and face many resurgent nightmares — but he thinks it’s overall quite worth it.

There’s also the little blossom of hope, which he holds quite close to his heart, that he’ll maybe one day get closer to understanding the mysteries of the Veil and perhaps even be able to bring Sirius back. It’s a small hope, barely more than an illusion, but it does give him strength on the days where it all gets to be a bit too much.

* * *

Going back in time thirty years was not the product of a rash and ill-thought-out plan. On the contrary.

It took them months and months of arguing and hair-pulling — and one instance of an all-out brawl — for everyone to finally agree that traveling back in time would be the only viable solution to their insurmountable problem.

It then took over two years for them to all agree on a plan, work out all the kinks, tie all the loose ends, and, most importantly, figure out how the hell they were supposed to do it.

In the end, it came down to Hermione and Draco emerging out of the Malfoy library after a three-day hole-in with a ritual that was, without a doubt, one of the darkest Harry has ever heard about. He’s obviously not counting the whole Horcrux-making process — that stands on an entirely different level.

After having decided long ago that Harry would be the one to go back, mostly because Harry was having none of it about his friends sacrificing their lives — and wasn’t it strange that he now considered Draco as one of his closest friends? — all that was left to do was gather all the ingredients for the ritual, wait for the summer solstice, cross their fingers, and pray for the best.

Harry was never one for prayers, but he thinks there might be something to it given his proven success.

Well, there’s still the matter of going back so, he’ll hold on to his judgment on that for now.

* * *

Harry is working on devising a ward that will allow him to get closer to the veil without running the risk of falling through when he lets out a groan in frustration and nearly rips a handful of hair off his head.

He can practically hear Draco’s voice in his head snarkily saying, “It’s not like it would make much of a difference in the overall look, Potter.” Because Draco is still a git even if they are friends, and he also still refuses to call him Harry for some unknown reason.

The smile at the thought of his friends is quickly replaced by the reality that he’ll have to wait five years to see them again. Of course, the same can’t be said for them, and Harry is still not sure how he feels about aging five years while his friends only age a few minutes, if that.

The ritual wasn’t very specific, but that’s Harry’s interpretation of ‘immediate return in the present time’. A present which is currently his future and it’s all… just bloody complicated.

Giving up on the ward creation for the day, Harry decides to heck with it and leaves work early. It’s not like they have an actual schedule what with all the purposeful mystery surrounding the job. After all, they can’t very well be Unspeakables if everyone and their cousin sees them every day, at the same time, coming and going from level nine.

Shaking off the last of his work-related thoughts, Harry decides his morose feelings deserve an indulgent trip to Sibilant Saigon, a Vietnamese restaurant just at the edge of Diagon Alley, too close to Knockturn for many ‘decent’ folk to approach, but where the food is absolutely delicious.

Harry thinks the current cook is even better than the one in the future, and he didn’t think it was possible.

The dim atmosphere that greets him, filled with the sibilant hisses of dozens of snake paintings and ornaments, also explains the absence of those so-called decent folk. Voldemort has already started his reign of terror and it’s common knowledge that he’s a parselmouth.

For Harry, though, the restaurant brings with it fond memories of dinners past — future? — where he and his friends would joke around the table and dare each other to eat everything on the menu, particularly the snake dishes.

“You can’t come to a restaurant called _Sibilant Saigon_ and not try their snakes,” Ron would say.

And then he and Draco would trade suggestive looks and proceed to rib Harry until he’d just roll his eyes and say, “Yeah, yeah, we all know I like that type of snake too. Though I think I have a certain preference for dragon-bred weasel,” and his smirk at Ron’s outraged look and blustering words would make it all worth it.

Chuckling to himself at the memory, Harry sits quietly in his corner table, next to a beautiful painting of a red-headed krait. She’s one of Harry’s favorites due to the incessant string of lewd comments she makes about all the patrons that walk in.

Who knew a snake painting could make for such amusing company?

Harry always has a particularly good time when the snake turns her attention on Draco and he makes it a point to translate everything she says word for word while Draco becomes increasingly more flustered.

It’s a pity he’s missing out on that type of entertainment for the night.

It’s halfway through his meal when he nearly chokes on his pho and all but sees his death flash before his eyes. All because of the damned snake who decided that this was the perfect moment to say, “Oh, if I were a human I would leave that disgusting food and jump right on to that woman’s lap and fuck her senseless.”

Harry coughs, still recovering from his near brush with death by pho asphyxiation, and the snake merely keeps going for it.

“Have you even seen her, useless human man? Just get off your arse and go dive into that warm body, fill her with your seed, make a hundred babies with her. Oh, if only I could get off this painting! Have you seen those breasts? I want to lick them, to bite them. Hmm, I want to kiss her all over—”

“Merlin, Hanh! That’s—“ He splutters, quite at a loss for words. He settles for, “No way to talk about a woman,” because he can all but hear Hermione’s voice in his head and he most certainly agrees with it.

He’s not even seen the woman Hanh is drooling over but he can be quite certain that, even if she were a goddess walking the earth, that’d be no way to talk about her.

Besides, “I didn’t know you’re into the ladies. Is there even such a thing as lesbian snakes?” And this is suddenly a very important question that needs answers.

Hanh snorts as well as a snake painting can — a surprising amount, it turns out — and gives him a condescending look.

“Men are useless, why would I concern myself with them?” And then she gives him a very pointed look which conveys exactly how she considers him to be one of those useless men. He thinks that’s quite enough judgment for one night and is about to tell her to piss off when she rushes along with, “And why are you still sitting? Haven’t you heard all the things you should do to her? Do you need me to teach you? Do you not know where all the female pleasure parts are?”

Harry pointedly puts his hands to his ears and starts to shake his head one way and the other, humming to himself to drown out the sound of Hanh very loudly enumerating all the different erogenous zones in the female body.

All Harry knows is that whoever painted her is a great old pervert, and now all the other snakes in the restaurant have paused to hear her loud lecture. They’re disturbingly interesting, too.

Harry curses his life and all of his ancestors before him.

“Are you alright?”

There’s a delicate touch on his shoulder, just the fingertips, soft and hesitant, and concerned yet amused blue eyes meet his when he looks up.

And they belong to the striking face of _Narcissa fucking Malfoy_.

Harry’s brain freezes for a long moment.

Rationally, he knew he’d run into people he knows from his time. He’d prepared for that. Sort of. Mostly by being very determined that he would avoid any and all contact with Hogwarts and anyone sharing a last name with him or his friends. But he’d not prepared for being confronted with a face he knows.

And definitely not for it to be Narcissa Malfoy, of all people.

And she’s… Harry doesn’t even have the words to properly understand the way she’s looking at him, but it’s definitely not with the dislike he’s become so accustomed to, and that’s certainly evoking weird thoughts in his jumbled mind.

Such as, the woman is abso-fucking-lutely _gorgeous_.

“Now _that_ is a proper woman,” Hanh says approvingly. “She didn’t wait for your useless arse to get up, she’s doing your job for you. Now don’t bugger it up!”

Harry chokes on air and his outraged eyes turn instantly to the devil-painted snake.

“Shut it, you perverted snake.”

He then immediately realizes that he has company — _human_ company — and that most people don’t go around talking to snakes.

Yet, while the reaction he’s expecting goes more along the lines of a shrieked “Ahhhh,” and “Sweet Salazar save me,” or even a heartfelt “What the buggering fuck,” what he gets instead is:

“Oh. You’re a parselmouth.”

Just like that.

Harry blinks. And then again. He’s starting to think he’s got a real problem because Narcissa Malfoy just looks at him as if one of the night’s mysteries has been solved and now Harry is _interesting_.

And fucking Hanh just keeps egging him on about getting the hell up and fucking her already.

Harry does get up, but only because he can hear Draco screaming in his ear about being polite to a lady and _especially_ one who is his mother. It’s a good thing, too, because he certainly seems to need the little push to be able to put his shock aside and act like a normal fucking person for once.

Even if to do that he has to pretend to be someone he’s not.

“I’m… yes. I am. I’m Harry, by the way, Harry Hawthorne. Sorry for the little show, Hanh is a real firecracker,” he says, sending said devil-snake an evil glare.

Hanh just looks at him smugly and keeps telling him to “Fuck the woman already, we don’t have all night. Put your baby in her belly!”

So Harry unapologetically Silences her and Conjures a blindfold for her eyes for good measure.

Narcissa lets out a lovely, heartfelt laugh at that, and Harry’s shocked face turns to her and finds her eyes dancing with mirth.

For some reason, this is what shocks him most out of tonight’s events so far. That Narcissa Malfoy is even capable of such a lovely, genuine laugh. He stares at her for a second too long thanks to that little tidbit.

Dear Merlin. The woman is absolutely stunning when she laughs.

He promptly shakes his head off the thought.

That is certainly not the way he wants to think about his friend’s mother, not to mention the woman is double his age _and_ was married to a Death Eather.

Well, she’s not double his age now, his brain helpfully supplies. Is actually a bit younger. Harry decides that’s neither here not there.

“I wish I could’ve heard it, it must have been quite something indeed for you to Silence a painting,” she says, voice filled with amusement. “I’m Narcissa Black.”

Harry feels his body mechanically take her hand and press his lips to it, and the little Draco-voice in his mind echoes its approval. Harry wonders for a ludicrous moment if that voice has taken over control of his body.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Black. Even if I did just embarrass myself in the process.”

Narcissa smirks. “It was quite entertaining. I was just worried when my sister pointed out you seemed to be having some sort of fit,” she says, and Harry notices for the first time the table she was sitting at, a few tables across from him which explains Hanh’s premiere view.

Andromeda is sitting there, looking at both of them with curiosity and faint amusement.

Harry nearly does a double-take.

He was quite sure that Andromeda had been disinherited by the family at this point, as Tonks should be about a year old. Yet here she is, having dinner with her sister.

“I apologize for the scare,” Harry says smoothly, hoping to hide the small pause while his brain processes these new facts. “I was just… quite traumatized. I think whoever named her had quite a sense of humor.”

Narcissa’s laugh rings lightly in his ears and he can’t help but stare a bit at the sight.

Good Merlin but he’d never heard her laugh so much in his entire life. She should do it more often, he absently notes. It makes her look more… Just more.

“Well, at least you had some company, disreputable as it may be. It’s a wonderful gift you have, Mr. Hawthorne,” she says with a small smile.

Harry nods, still a bit astounded at her easy-going reaction. “It’s quite useful, yes. I… I’ve recently moved back to the country so I still don’t know a lot of people. This place helps, I guess,” he says, then bites his lip and frowns a bit at his sudden honesty. He certainly didn’t mean to share so much, and especially not with her.

Yet the look she gives him is one soft with understanding and a little undercurrent of something else, and Harry is soon faced with a coy smile and an insistent invitation to join their table.

Not wanting to seem terribly rude by refusing, he dutifully follows along, his bowl of pho levitating ahead of him and garnering a few amused looks from the rest of the patrons.

“Andy, this is Harry Hawthorne. Mr. Hawthorne, this is my sister, Andromeda Tonks.”

Harry kisses her hand and takes a seat after Narcissa, smiling at both of them politely.

Their table is tucked away in a darker alcove of the small restaurant, but it’s big enough to seat the three of them comfortably. His bowl of pho sets down with a soft clunk, a bit of the soup sloshing but remaining mercifully within the bowl.

It’s not one of those restaurants where the waitstaff know what you’re thinking before you do, or even care for that matter, so Harry summons his drink and place setting as well.

The two women give him identical looks of amusement.

It’s a bizarre situation to find the two sisters he’d thought were on the outs having a friendly dinner together — not to mention Narcissa didn’t even sneer at Andromeda’s last name. And they both just look so _young_.

It’s all quite surreal.

“It’s lovely to meet you both. But please, call me Harry. Mr. Hawthorne was my father,” he says, wrinkling his nose in distaste, the lie falling from his lips with practiced ease.

They laugh lightly, ask him to return the favor, and Harry has a moment of panic at his own fumbling with the situation because now he has to call Draco’s mom _Narcissa_ and that is just a whole other level of weird.

Merlin’s balls, he’s a bit in over his head.

This was certainly not the plan. Not the plan _at all_.

“So what did the painting ever do to you, Harry?” Andromeda asks, and at least her easygoing personality is still a constant he can hold on to to keep his sanity.

Harry lifts his gaze up from his food and sees her eyes sparkling with amusement. She’s seated perfectly, her posture pristine, and she maneuvers the chopsticks like she was born using them. Like this, younger and less burdened by life, she doesn’t look as much like the Bellatrix he remembers. And he can see the perfect manners instilled in her by a noble family in her every movement, something she’s curiously more relaxed about in the future.

“Harry is a parselmouth,” Narcissa interjects, sending her sister a certain look that escapes Harry’s understanding.

Andromeda’s eyebrows merely rise a bit but her voice is even when she asks, “Are you now? How interesting.”

Harry is beginning to think nothing fazes the Black women and he seriously wishes that this was the type of reaction everyone had given him when it had first come out in second year.

Harry hums, taking a bite of his pho. “It does come in handy some times, but at others, I really wish I couldn’t understand a thing. There are some things I can’t un-hear and Hanh is just… Well. I don’t even know how to describe her.”

“Hanh?”

“The snake,” Narcissa supplies, taking a dainty bite out of her own meal. Harry’s eyes nearly bulge at the sight of stewed snake morsels. Who even are these women?

“Interesting. And is this a genetic ability, Harry?”

Harry wonders if this is Andromeda’s subtle way of asking about his lineage, though he’s never known her to care about blood status, so it must be curiosity.

“From generations ago,” he says, thankful that Hermione had come up with a detailed family history that they could use to explain this. “One of my great-great-great-grandmothers came from India. So, not related to Salazar Slytherin, that I know of. Of course, all the pureblood houses are kind of related but…” he waves his hand in the air a bit and decides it’ll be better used to put more food into his mouth.

The two women look at him in fascination and Harry feels a bit like a museum piece — carefully studied and analyzed to the minute details.

He swallows the food down forcefully and takes another bite, only to have that annoying Draco-voice in his head pester him about table manners.

Gosh, he hates all these little voices. His friends aren’t even technically born yet.

“That’s certainly fascinating,” Narcissa says. She too is proficient with her chopsticks, and Harry stares for a beat at her delicate movements. He still struggles with his quite a bit. “And where did you go to school? I’m sure such a thing would’ve spread like wildfire in Hogwarts and I don’t remember ever hearing about a parselmouth in recent years.”

“That’s because I went to Uagadou. My father was a professor there, he taught Care of Magical Creatures. His specialty was on tropical and subtropical species.”

“How interesting. Did he come back with you?” Andromeda asks.

Harry shakes his head and affects a look of grief for his supposedly recently deceased father. “No. He… There was an incident with a Nundu.”

He’s met with identical faces of sympathy and feels a little bad for the lie.

Well, it’s not a lie exactly, it’s just that the Jonas Hawthorne who was a professor of Care of Magical Creatures in Uagadou and died of a Nundu attack never had a child named Harry. Or any child at all. Which is certainly what one requires when attempting to forge a new identity — fake parents who are very much dead and no other family to contest your legitimacy.

“That must be devastating, Harry,” Andromeda offers, and Harry gives her a tight smile.

“So you came here by yourself?”

Harry nods. “Yes. I thought I would try to make a new life here, return to our family home and see what life brings.”

“It must be very different from where you grew up,” Narcissa says.

Harry meets her eyes and finds a surprising level of curiosity and a hint of wistfulness, almost as if she wishes she had had the same opportunities.

Which must certainly mean that he’s seeing things that aren’t there because this is Narcissa Malfoy, a woman who looks down on anything that isn’t pureblood British high society. There’s no way she wishes for a life running away from Nundus and crocodiles in the tropics. There are bugs _everywhere_. And the humidity itself is just…

He shakes his head.

“It is, yes, but I’m enjoying myself quite a bit, even if I haven’t really found my footing outside of work.”

“Where do you work, then?” Andromeda asks

“The Ministry. I’m a consultant,” he smoothly says.

Narcissa’s eyes sparkle with something. “Ah, yes. Well, you will certainly require some leisure time after having to deal with all those bureaucrats for the week. You should join us some other time for tea then, Harry. We’ll introduce you around, it’ll be good for you to unwind.”

Harry meets her eyes and is a bit stunned when the offer seems to be genuine; she even seems to look forward to it.

He nods, a bit dumbly. “I’d love to,” he says, and he thinks he might actually mean it, even though he really shouldn’t.

Sweet Merlin’s beard, he’s ended up in some alternate version of the past. He must have.


	2. Chapter 2

At first, Harry tries to avoid it.

It’s not that he doesn’t like Andromeda, quite the contrary. They get along very well and they share custody of Teddy and everything. She’s great fun, and he had a great time with her the other night, so she’s clearly always been great fun.

The thing is — _Narcissa_. There’s no other way around it.

Harry is a bit iffy with becoming friends with Narcissa _Malfoy_ , who also happens to be Draco’s _mom,_ and it’s all a bit too weird, even for his standards.

He did have a good time at the restaurant, much to his surprise, and Narcissa was clearly one of the reasons why. But as soon as he got home, the reality of it just came crashing down and he had to wonder at what he was doing agreeing to see them again.

Narcissa is… well. The woman is quite something, but not necessarily in a good way.

She’s snobby and a blood purist and housed Lord freaking Voldemort in her house like a proper pureblood mistress, and she clearly taught her son some very wrong ideals because Draco was a horrible bully as a child.

But she’s also… She did save his life, so there’s that. And she loves Draco with all her heart, which is certainly nice, even if she did spoil him a lot. And maybe the whole Voldemort thing wasn’t her fault at all.

And she’s also frankly quite surprising and not at all what he was expecting. This young version of her, at least.

She is maybe a little bit too beautiful, though. One thing is being beautiful and another is being _too stunning for actual words_ , and Harry thinks that, much to her fault, she falls a bit on the latter.

It’s a problem, certainly. It comes with a lot of moments where Harry just has to stop and _look_ and then stop looking and force his brain to think again, which it was not wont to do. So. There’s that.

And Harry can definitely _not_ be having those moments around Draco’s mom. He _cannot_. Absolutely not. Draco will kill him, bring him back, then proceed to slowly dismember him bit by bit until he kills him again.

Harry is not looking forward to that type of death.

So everything together adds up to him avoiding their invites for tea for about a week with, admittedly, weak excuses. He does think he could’ve lasted longer though, if not for Narcissa ‘coincidentally’ bumping into him as he was coming out of work, looking striking in dark red robes which accentuate all her features and contrast perfectly with her pale skin and long blond hair.

Harry thinks she did it a bit on purpose because obviously his brain is a bit slow what with the sheer vision that she is, and before he can remember that _this is Draco’s mom_ , he’s agreed to tea with her right that instant.

He groans inwardly. Stupid, sluggish brain.

He does consider for a second that the problem might not have been his brain’s fault at all, but quickly dismisses it. Certain things don’t bear thinking about.

They end up at a small tea shop next to the Ministry, one Harry passes by almost every day but has never actually stopped to go in.

It’s cozy, surprisingly. He was expecting something stifling and high class from her, but then he did run into her at the Sibilant Saigon which is anything but with all the perverted snakes, so his perception of her is obviously flawed.

He ends up smiling at her, immediately relieved and at ease.

When she smiles back, wide and bright, Harry thinks that he might truly be in quite a bit of trouble.

Over a delicious cup of tea and some tea cakes, Narcissa guides him skillfully through some small talk about his work — which he carefully weaves around — and his life — which he dutifully recounts minus everything that is actually true — and his views on London so far.

That one he can honestly answer, if only because London in the seventies is certainly different from his London.

“Well, it is quite a bit gray,” he quips, and she smiles, amused. “But besides the lack of sunshine, I’m liking it so far. It’s very vibrant, there’s definitely a lot to do, and I can always go into muggle London when I need a bit of a change.”

Narcissa chews on her biscuit. “And you’re comfortable there? Amongst the muggles?”

He expects her to frown, to sneer even, but she doesn’t. She looks curious, like she genuinely wants to know, not at all like she despises the mere mention of muggles.

Either she’s a fantastic actress or Harry is really missing something.

He nods. “Yes. I grew up amongst muggles, my father wanted me to experience both societies and fit in everywhere. They’re not much different than us,” he says, trying to get a feel of her thoughts on the manner.

Thankfully, she frowns a bit, and the world is right again.

“I know they’re… well, they’re obviously human so there is that, but I don’t find all that many similarities between us.” She takes a sip of her tea and her red nails curl around the cup delicately. Harry waits, because she clearly is still mulling over something, and then she purses her lips a bit and says, “I think… I think having separated from them for so long left us with quite the divide and I’m not so sure we could bridge it.”

Harry stares. He’s half tempted to check her for pollyjuice because certainly this woman who starts a polite discussion with him and makes valid, reasonable points, cannot be the same woman who sneered at Hermione’s parents simply for being muggles.

He blinks and rushes not to leave her waiting. “I agree. With the separation bit, I mean. I do think that we could get closer as a society, if only we stopped to actually listen to the other side before making judgments based on preconceived notions.”

Narcissa sets her teacup on the saucer with barely a clink. “They don’t even know we exist, Harry, It’s not exactly a two-way conversation, is it? But I do see your point,” she says slowly. “We’ve always been taught muggles are beneath us and that they’re pretty much stupid.”

Harry leans back against the armchair. It’s comfortable, he likes the soft cushioning aground it, and the armrest is perfect for him to wrap his hands around while he considers her.

“And do you agree with that?”

Narcissa takes another bite of the biscuit, her white teeth sharp,swallows, and then purses her lips. Harry is a bit drawn to the dark red lipstick which perfectly matches her dress, but he forces his eyes to meet hers.

“Hmm. Not exactly. I don’t think they should be harmed for sport or just out of spite,” she says, disapproval marring her smooth features. “But I do think that having magic does make us… if not better than at least superior on some level. And I _know_ they wouldn’t appreciate that difference if they found out about our existence.”

Narcissa’s cool voice hints at darker things, and Harry doesn’t think her slight emphasis is a trick of his hearing.

He wonders what she’s hiding behind those veiled eyes. 

Harry taps his fingers on the wooden armrest and thinks back to all the kids in primary school who shunned him for being different, to his ‘family’ who kept him in a cupboard for ten years, to a small orphan boy who was bullied and shunned for years until he grew to hate muggles so much that he almost destroyed the entire world.

“No,” he says, his heart a bit heavy at the reluctant agreement. “They wouldn’t, not if they don’t understand it. They can be… Well, like any sort of people, they’re not very fond of anyone who is too different.”

He thinks he might have let on a bit more than he wanted with that comment because Narcissa gives him a piercing look that is far too sharp. And there’s a fire there, a hint of danger, which sends a shiver down his spine.

“No, I don’t imagine they are. Muggleborns especially have it particularly hard.”

There’s that tone again, like she’s containing herself but the danger lurks just beneath the surface. It makes Harry frown.

Narcissa brings the teacup to her lips again and darts her eyes around the room.

“Yes, they do.” She directs her eyes back to him, curious at the unwitting curtness of his voice, and Harry shakes his head with a wry smile. “I’m a halfblood, I grew up with magical parents, but I know my mother didn’t have it easy.”

It’s not a complete lie, and he’s always found that lacing a lie with the truth is the best solution. He knows he can’t pass off as a pureblood, even after all the lessons Draco, Ron, and Neville put him through. There are just some things that purebloods don’t even think about, they just assume everyone knows.

She licks her lips. “I see.”

Harry raises an eyebrow at her noncommittal tone. “Is that a problem?”

“Not at all,” she says cooly.

“Would it have been a problem if I were muggleborn?”

He scans her carefully for any tell and she merely blinks once before her face sets placidly. She crosses her legs and leans back against her own armchair, mimicking Harry’s posture.

“I don’t have a problem with muggleborns,” Narcissa says evenly. Her thumb rubs against her index and middle finger absently and Harry’s eyes fix on the movement. “I have a problem with people who are born outside of our society and when they come in they just demand to be accepted with all their customs without bothering to learn about ours. I have a problem when they demand we change our ways and our traditions — which have existed for centuries — to fit into a mold of what they grew up in. I have a problem when they look down on our traditions because they consider them outdated and think us silly for following them.”

Harry meets her eyes again, sees the challenge in them. He takes a sip of his own tea. When he puts it back, it does clink loudly against the saucer.

“And what about the purebloods who look down on them? Just for growing up in a non-magical family.”

Narcissa makes a little head movement which could be a shrug if she were any less refined.

“They’re just as wrong, of course. But you see, they’re coming into _our_ society. If they want to live amongst us, they have to at least try to live _like_ us.”

She pauses for another sip of tea, slowly reaching down for it and then bringing it to her lips. She blows primly, though it’s certainly past the point where it’s too hot to drink.

Harry waits. He can see that for some reason it’s a topic she’s passionate about and he’s frankly surprised not to hear her spouting muggle hatred and blood prejudice just for the sake of it.

When she speaks again, her voice is softer and warmer and filled with a certain reverence. “I like our traditions and our history, Harry. I like the fact that we do things a certain way and have done so for centuries. I appreciate the value in magical families passing down their heritage from parent to child.” She runs a hand through her hair and Harry thinks that she might be nervous. “And I think that muggleborns should be taken into our society much sooner, so that they grow up knowing about us and learn to live like us.”

Harry bites his lip at the automatic reply he wants to give to that and forces himself to pause. Narcissa tilts her head just a bit, as if challenging him. Her fingers resume their slow circular movements against each other and his eyes are drawn to them again. Red on red on red.

Harry takes a sip of his tea and carefully considers the woman before him.

He was not expecting this level of honesty from her and he was also not expecting for her arguments to make sense and not be just mindless prejudice. Nor was he expecting the undercurrent of passion that she let slip a few times, as if this is something that really matters to her.

He runs a finger over the rim of the teacup and her eyes follow his every movement. “I do see your point, Narcissa. I may not agree with everything,” he says with a placating smile, “But we can agree to disagree on some things.”

“As long as they’re not major ones,” she knowingly says, and Harry can’t help but smile wider.

“Touché.”

He playfully tips his teacup at her and takes a hearty sip. Then he takes a bite of a wonderful ginger biscuit which goes absolutely heavenly with it and he just knows that he’ll be coming back to this tea shop a lot of times. He hopes it’s still open in the future. Draco would love it.

Narcissa busies herself with her own tea in between stolen looks at him, and he realizes that she truly was nervous about speaking her mind like that.

The woman is quite the conundrum, Harry muses.

“Thank you for being honest,” he says after a moment. Narcissa gives him a peculiar look. “It’s just… I enjoy your company quite a bit, and I would’ve hated to feel guilty about being your friend.”

She laughs then, a shy little thing, and then she looks a bit taken aback by it. It has his eyes widening and an unfamiliar feeling starts floating around in his chest.

“Were you afraid I was a Death Eater, Harry?” she teases, and he remembers the man she’s going to marry and the circles she runs in, and his lips twist wryly.

“No, but it’s nice to have it confirmed.”

Narcissa smiles, soft and genuine. Then her face takes on a darker hue. “I don’t think anyone deserves to be hunted and killed for who they are, Harry. I could never condone that, even if I do agree with some of their ideas.”

He nods solemnly. “Good. That’s good.”

* * *

When Narcissa owls him a few days later, inviting him for a small lunch date with Andromeda and Ted, Harry is understandably a bit surprised.

It’s one thing to find out that Narcissa still hangs out with her sister even after she was disinherited, but it’s a whole other thing to discover that she also socializes with Ted.

The seventies are definitely strange.

If Harry weren’t so confident in Hermione’s skills, he would’ve thought the ritual got somehow messed up and he’d ended up in a parallel universe.

But no, he is right where he is supposed to be, strange as it is.

So, brain still reeling at the confusing information, Harry heads out to meet them at lunch the following Saturday.

It’s a muggle restaurant, surprisingly. Even more surprising is the fact that Narcissa is dressed up in muggle clothes, upper-scale though they may be. It’s obvious that even a dress instead of her usual robes could never take the refined air from her figure, but instead of standing out due to some disastrous choice of muggle clothes, as Harry has seen many a wizard do, she stands out thanks to her innate elegance and beauty.

Andromeda, of course, blends in seamlessly with the muggle crowd, although she too stands out with her good looks.

They settle down and the conversation flows easily thanks to Andromeda and Narcissa’s years of navigating different social circles. They handle it naturally, going from topic to topic so as to bring Harry into their group in a way that feels much easier than what he’d been expecting.

Ted is an easygoing type, and Harry actually enjoys his company without having the burden of always having his future self to compare him to because he never really got to know that man.

It does bring him a certain sadness to know that he’ll be dead by the time he goes back and that Andromeda still hasn’t fully recovered from it.

But he did know the price of going to the past.

It’s not like he’s unaware of his parents, Sirius, and Remus tucked away at Hogwarts. Or of Snape, git that he was.

There are hundreds of people who will be long dead by the time he gets back who shouldn’t have to be at all. But life is not fair, and Harry is not here to change the past.

It couldn’t be changed even if he tried.

So, with a little effort, he pushes those thoughts away and focuses on the casual chatter around the table.

Narcissa is particularly funny, he finds. He wasn’t quite expecting it, not with the image of future-Narcissa in his head constantly looking like she’s smelling something bad, but he’s pleasantly surprised.

Her humor is as sharp as she is, witty and pointed and laced with sarcasm, and he finds himself laughing unexpectedly and meeting her pleased eyes and coy smile often.

His eyes drift to her a lot, even when she’s not doing anything especially deserving of his attention.

She’s very controlled in her movements, he notes. She brings the fork to her mouth precisely and always takes a dignified bite, her lips barely touching the metal. She cleans her lips in soft swipes of her cloth napkin, the lipstick barely coming off. She doesn’t fidget, she doesn’t drum her fingers on the table like he’s wont to do. She does have the habit of rubbing her thumb to her fingers which had drawn his eyes last time, and it does so again today.

Harry can’t seem to help but categorize every single thing that she does and he can’t fathom why.

By the end of lunch, when they’re having dessert, which is a complete indulgence because there’s no way that any of them is still hungry after the amount they ate, Harry leans back on his chair and realizes that he hasn’t had such a good time since he arrived in this time. Hasn’t been so… relaxed.

After the bill is paid, he sees Andromeda and Narcissa exchange a look before Andromeda announces that they unfortunately have to leave, stating that, “Nymphadora will get to all sorts of trouble with her grandmother if we leave her for too long,” she says with a rueful shake of her head but her eyes are shining and Harry can see how much she loves her baby. “That child will be the death of me.”

Ted shakes his head and Andromeda gives Harry a kiss on the cheek and a peculiar look. Harry doesn’t really watch them go because Narcissa always, always draws his eyes.

Narcissa smoothes her hands over her dress, tilts her head a bit to the side, and smiles at him in a way that makes him have to very diligently remind himself that _she’s Draco’s mom_.

“Do you have plans for the afternoon, Harry?” Narcissa asks, and it’s not his imagination that her voice is just a little sultry.

Dammit. Draco’s _mom_.

He shakes his head anyway because he’s obviously a complete idiot with a massive death wish.

“Do you have something in mind?” What the hell is wrong with him? He cannot be seriously considering… Fuck. Stupid mouth.

“A walk? There’s a nice park nearby, I go there sometimes. It’s not raining, for once, we should seize the chance.”

He clears his head and nods his assent and Narcissa leads him out with a coy smile.

Harry’s fears are confirmed; there must be something seriously wrong with him.

* * *

Harry gets an invite to a ball at the Black residence, delivered by owl in all its expensive parchment and meticulous writing glory.

He stares at it for a long time.

In the end, he can’t find enough excuses not to go, although they had all seemed like good ones at the start of his argument with himself.

There was something about avoiding the house like the plague, and no way in hell was he going to risk running into even more people that he knows, and what is he thinking agreeing to go into the pureblood’s den with Voldemort steadily climbing to power.

All of that was, naturally, summarily dismissed with the single argument that Narcissa would be there.

So Harry goes.

He considers for a moment, while putting on formal robes which feel too tight and constricting — mostly to his personality, his body is actually quite comfortable — that he might be bewitched. Like, definitely a low-grade curse or something.

It just seems a bit unusual for him to be so… intrigued by someone. He’s definitely sticking to intrigued. That that someone is Narcissa Malfoy — or Black, he really should start thinking of her like that — only serves to drive his suspicion deeper.

But then he thinks of the way her laugh made him warm just by hearing it, and how when the sun reached behind her in the park Harry effectively forgot there was a world besides her, and how her smile was so bright he once had to look behind him just to make sure it was actually directed at him, and, well.

It all becomes a bit self-explanatory.

Which is not to say that it becomes easier to wrap his mind around.

Still, donned in too-well-fitting robes and a hefty dose of courage, Harry drags his feet to number twelve Grimmauld Place and tries not to think of memories past. Future.

At least the wild state that is his uncontrollable hair manages to give him some comfort in this unearthly situation.

Kreacher opens the door and Harry pauses, blinks, and decides for his sanity that he will not dwell on the elf’s much improved and — he almost cringes — _cheerful_ look.

The house is the same but also exactly not at all like what he knows.

Kreacher leads him through to the reception area, a room which he converted into a playroom for Teddy, and Harry’s eyes struggle to grasp the immaculate feel of the house, the furniture which suddenly looks like it belongs exactly there, in all its opulent glory. Even the colors are different. It’s dark, sure, but in a way that has him convinced is purposeful rather than dingy and creepy.

Harry’s eyes snap to well-lit chandeliers and floating trays filled with appetizers and champagne flutes, to paintings that look lively and clear of grime. There’s soft ambient music and it overall feels much more inviting than he’d ever considered possible.

There are people spread around the room, engaged in casual-looking conversation, although when Harry strains his eyes and focuses his ears he can see the fixed smiles and the too polite conversation. It’s all politics.

At least some things are as he had expected, which is a relief.

Harry is in a room filled with Britain’s magical high society — or at least the Darker leaning side of it — and he wants to scrunch his foot on the floor and fidget with his glasses.

Narcissa’s eyes meet his almost as soon as Harry walks in, as if she’s been doing constant sweeps towards the door, waiting. It makes him feel vaguely self-conscious but also a lot pleased.

She reaches him, walking through the various groups of people with effortless ease, and greets him with a kiss on the cheek which makes his face warm.

He looks at her, emerald gown flowing down her body, tight enough to show her curves although not so much that it would draw raised eyebrows from the older family members. She has a silver necklace and matching earrings and her lips are red, her trademark color, it would seem, and Harry stares for a moment too long.

“I’m glad you could make it, Harry.” She touches her necklace, just the fingertips, and Harry looks there too before he forces his eyes back to meet hers.

“You look lovely,” he says. He couldn’t have said anything else, and he only doesn’t say more because he’s afraid to taste the words on his mouth and find them addictive.

Narcissa smiles, her fingers move to touch her hair just for a moment before she lets her arm fall down gracefully.

“Thank you. You look very dapper yourself.”

He wonders if she’s just being polite, because he certainly feels like the formal robes make him look out of place, but her eyes linger a bit too long in their once-over and maybe she’s not.

Narcissa, ever the perfect hostess, carters him around form person to person, introducing Harry to more people than he could possibly remember were half of them not part of the family tree in his own house.

He’d traced over the names, fingertips following line after name after line, back and back and back. There had been more than one Potter there, much to his surprise at first. There were many more recognizable surnames, even a Weasley or two.

It had fascinated him for hours. To go from having no family to speak of to suddenly finding so many people related to him, even if very distantly.

He’d been even more fascinated by the Potter family tree, of course, and had felt a pang of sadness at the thought that he didn’t even know his mother’s parents' names and there was no Evans family tree to get lost in.

Now he puts faces to names which are familiar and it’s easier than normal to remember who is who. It’s also harder than it should be to ignore what he knows about these people.

He’s grateful it’s the end of May and Hogwarts is still in session — he wouldn’t have come if there was even the slightest the possibility of running into Sirius. But he does meet Walburga and, unfortunately, her portrait is not the simple product of the woman having lost her mind with grief.

Harry tries to make polite conversation since Harry Hawthorne has no reason to hate her on principle, but his smile becomes too strained after only a few minutes and gone altogether after another few. Narcissa, observant as ever, skillfully makes their excuses and leads him to meet her parents.

They’re nicer than Walburga, though he’s sure everyone but Voldemort probably is — and even _he_ can be nice and charming when he wants to. They’re as formal as he had expected and he thinks that, for once, he appreciates it because Narcissa introduces him as an acquaintance and Harry doesn’t want them to think of him as anything but.

The food is splendid, and Harry at one point hides in the corner with a whole tray for himself. He watches everyone move around from circle to circle, eyes darting to Narcissa every other minute as she makes her rounds.

She can’t stay with him all night, which is a terrible shame, and he thinks that maybe his face shows exactly what he’s thinking. Harry takes a morose bite of something salmony, the flavors dancing around his tongue wonderfully.

He watches out of the corner of his eyes as someone approaches, and is determined to focus his attention on another bite of that salmon thingy.

The someone is undeterred by his obvious love interest with the food.

“If you’re all the way here with a food tray to yourself, I can only imagine you’ve found gold,” a smooth voice says, amusement in every layer.

Harry snaps his eyes up, food halfway to his mouth, and then promptly drops it in shock.

The eyes are different, of course, dark brown, almost black. The nose is different too — mostly because now it exists. The face is less pale and framed by hair, a respectable amount even, for his age.

Harry stares at the very handsome face of Tom Riddle for a very long time.

Tom’s smile turns curious after a moment of Harry’s silence, and then it morphs into something sharp and dangerous.

Meanwhile, Harry is too busy thinking about how _Lord freaking Voldemort_ is having a casual night out at the Black’s Spring ball.

He stares for a while longer, feels the probes of Legillimancy caress his mind, the softness of it completely unexpected. He meets Tom’s eyes head-on and sees as he goes from curious to intrigued to impressed at his shields.

“I’m Tom,” he says, and Harry finally looks away from his deep eyes to his hand with its long, spidery fingers.

And, in a motion that feels like someone is pulling his puppet strings, Harry’s own hand reaches forward and shakes it.

“Harry.”

Tom’s eyes sharpen, his head does a little motion thing like he’s indicating for Harry to give more, but Tom didn’t offer his last name so Harry doesn’t feel compelled to do so either.

Harry wonders if he only calls himself Voldemort to his followers or people he’s trying to scare. He figures that maybe when he’s trying to recruit people to his little dress-up group that he tries to appear as charming as possible. He’s always been a master manipulator, of course, Harry watched memory after memory of him charming anyone from professors to old ladies.

He thinks he’s being manipulated now, carefully drawn in into Tom’s spidery web with his charm — and something niggles at him that Tom’s angle is to seduce him.

Tom’s eyes linger over his body for a second too long and he puts on his most charming smile. Harry looks at it and thinks it would make his face impossibly more handsome if not for the fact that it doesn’t reach his eyes.

Tom releases his hand slowly, his fingers dragging on the back of Harry’s hand. He plucks a salmon thingy for himself, places everything in his mouth elegantly, and moans in appreciation. Then he takes a champagne flute from a passing tray and brings it to his lips.

His eyes never leave Harry, and Harry just looks at him, face impassive.

When he brings the glass back down, his fingers drumming against the flute in a methodical pattern, he smiles at Harry again.

“I can see why you chose this spot, Harry. The food is, indeed, delicious. And the view is certainly not bad at all.”

He pauses, takes another sip, and then runs a casual hand through his hair, mussing it slightly. Harry’s eyes snap up almost automatically, the move so incongruent with his memories. Tom smirks like he won something.

“I was starting to think I’d never escape the dreadful conversations,” Tom quips. “It all becomes quite dull after the first few rounds.”

He looks at Harry, searching, and Harry hums noncommittally.

Narcissa approaches them, then, all grace and fluid movements, and Harry has never been so glad to see her because one more second alone with _Voldemort_ , listening to him _flirt_ , would probably send him down a very dangerous path. 

“Oh, there you are, Harry.” Narcissa’s smile is bright when she looks at him but turns fixed when she notices his company and he’s certain then that she knows exactly who Tom is. “My Lord, it’s wonderful to see you tonight,” she says, as if it really were true. Harry would believe it too, if not for the way her smile doesn’t move one millimeter.

Tom bows his head and kisses her hand. “You look lovely as always, Ms. Black. I was just getting to know your companion.”

“Ah yes. Harry’s new in our circles, he’s only recently moved back to Britain.”

“Oh? Where from?” Like he’s only politely interested. Harry would believe that too if he hadn’t seen the way his eyes became sharper.

It’s Narcissa who answers for him again, after Harry takes too long to answer because he’s still looking at Tom.

“Uganda. Harry went to Uagadou.”

Tom’s eyes fix on his with increased interest. Harry feels Narcissa’s questioning glance but there’s only so much they can silently communicate before Tom catches on, so he doesn’t look at her.

Tom says, “Isn’t that interesting? Wandless magic is their specialty, I hear?” And it almost sounds like it’s a casual interest.

He’s good. If Harry didn’t know any better he’d be charmed. He can see how so many people fell for his rhetoric.

Harry nods, deciding that this direct a question requires an answer, and says, “Yes.”

Tom’s eyes sparkle with what looks like greed before it turns into irritation at Harry’s obvious refusal to interact with him.

Narcissa comes closer and touches Harry’s arm for a moment, drawing his attention automatically.

“Harry’s a bit shy, you see. There was a… situation which resulted in the loss of his father. How about you take me for a dance, Harry? I’m sure it’ll clear your mind off the sad remembrances.”

Tom nods, doesn’t say anything as Narcissa skillfully leads Harry through the room towards the recently open ballroom. Harry can feel his eyes on him even from afar, and he holds Narcissa tight when they start dancing, her presence soothing and calming.

Narcissa dances like she was born doing it, her natural grace amped up a few degrees. She glides them fluidly around the ballroom; there’s a song playing which he doesn’t recognize, but it’s slow and harmonious and soon he’s forgotten about everything but the woman in his arms.

He’s even forgotten that he’s not a good dancer at all, even with all the extra lessons both Luna and Draco have tried to push on him.

He tries to tell her this at one point, when he remembers, but she laughs and looks at him and flows around in a way that makes it look like he’s doing everything himself when he knows she’s basically leading him. Because she’s so brilliant at it and Harry doesn’t want her to think he’s too stupid, he follows dutifully.

He tells himself that this means nothing. That they’re just dancing. He thinks he manages to do a reasonable enough job at being convincing.

The first song ends and the second begins and Harry still has his arms around Narcissa and somehow they are still dancing. And no toes have suffered.

He takes a step closer, feels her warm body against his, the shape of her molds to his front. He leans his head down a bit and the smell of her is stronger here, closer to her neck. It’s fresh, like a cool summer night, it smells like a starry sky for some obscure reason which makes him think has magic involved.

He brings her closer, hears her soft exhale, feels her hand tighten around his shoulder. Her hair tickles his nose and he moves it back almost reverently. It’s soft but thick, and he pushes it to the side and breathes her in.

“You know who that was,” he says, when he’s calm enough that he won’t run the risk of doing anything colossally stupid.

He feels her nod against his chest. “He went to school with uncle Orion. Father was just a few years behind. He doesn’t often come but… I think someone may have told him about you.”

“He came to recruit me.”

“Possibly. He was very curious.”

“I did notice. Everyone here gets a bit excited about wandless magic,” he says, forcing the humor into his voice. Frankly, he still gets a bit excited himself, and he’s the one who now knows how to do it.

It’s a whole other feeling doing magic without a wand. With his wand, his holly one, and even the elder one he chooses not to think of as his, there’s a relationship built. A give and take. _He_ ’s not doing the magic so much as _they_ are.

Without a wand, he is… free. He’s one with the magic. He can feel it, the way it flows from him, around him, the way he can channel the magic in the air into doing his bidding. It’s often playful, warm, inviting. Dark magic, on the other hand, feels sticky and sinful. He’s had to practice some of that too, a few spells here and there, and he’s not a fan of how it makes him feel.

“Well, it does make for a significant advantage,” Narcissa points out.

Harry hums in agreement. He scans the room and sees various couples dancing, finds a few curious eyes on the two of them.

He should pull back, he thinks, but it’s a reluctant thought at best and he ends up discarding the notion as soon as it comes.

Narcissa is still young, twenty-years-old and beautiful, and it’s expected of her to have suitors running around her currying for favors. One night dancing in front of her family will not mean anything. Not yet.

He feels another set of eyes on him, unsettling in their eerie familiarity. He spins Narcissa a bit and comes face to face with Tom, casually leaning against a wall, drink in hand. Like that’s just something he _does_. Like he won’t spend years parading around on a throne.

There’s that look again in his face. Greedy, like he wants Harry, and Harry’s not so sure anymore that the flirting was all about manipulating him.

He suppresses a shudder.

Narcissa feels his tension. “He’s looking,” she guesses, and Harry nods. “He wants you.”

She too says it like she means more than him joining Voldemort and his merry band of Death Eaters. There’s also a question somewhere in there, and Harry shakes his head.

“He’s handsome of course, but I’m not foolish enough to fall for that. You know everything he stands for goes against my beliefs, Narcissa. Besides,” he spins her suddenly, delighting in the light laugh she lets out, and brings her closer with the next step. “I find that my interest is being held by someone else, lately.”

Narcissa pulls back, looks him in the eye, waits for a bit but never stops dancing. Harry thinks she’s cataloging every little expression and he lets her.

Her heels clack on the marble floor in tandem to the melody and he lets the _tap tap tap_ rhythm fill his mind until the only thoughts that can possibly fit in are about her.

In the end, she seems to find what she’s looking for because she smiles, brighter than she has all night, and leads him in five more consecutive songs.


	3. Chapter 3

A month later, they’re out on their sixth meeting and Harry can no longer call them anything but what they truly are — dates.

Which — _bloody hell_. He’s actually dating Draco’s mom.

He is so dead. Or will be, in about thirty years into the future.

But Narcissa is just so… Completely the opposite of what he was expecting. Granted, she is still snobbish and cool and can sneer like the best of the purebloods, but she is also intelligent and passionate and a huge nerd when it comes to magical theory, particularly Charms and the Dark Arts — obviously, she _is_ a Black after all. And she’s an incredibly talented witch.

She reminds him of Hermione quite a bit, actually, which he is certain is not a comparison either of them would appreciate.

And her laugh. Sweet Merlin, but her laugh does things to him. And she laughs so freely when she’s around him, so unrestrained, that he can’t help but have these moments where he just stops and stares and wonders what the hell happened to make her the woman he met in the future. So very unlike this younger version of her.

It’s all quite baffling.

Harry still doesn’t completely understand why she’s going on these dates with him, most of them initiated by her, in fact.

They had a lovely time at the ball and he knows that they had been the talk of the night. Knows that her family kept sending them glances all through the non-stop dancing and the laughing and the chatting. But also knows that they don’t think it should be anything other than casual

Harry Hawthorne is not one of them, not truly. He may carry a pureblood surname, and an old one at that, but that doesn’t mean much when he grew up in such a different place.

There’s the whole wandless magic factor, which he thinks might be one of the only things in his favor that may give them pause before summarily discarding him. But Harry knows they would never actually willfully agree to what they consider would be a lowering of standards.

And so, unable to contain his curiosity any longer, he asks her about it as delicately as he can. “I hope you’ll forgive me if I offend you, Narcissa, but there’s just something I’ve been wondering…”

She looks up at him from the meal she’s eating — something French and unpronounceable. Her knife stills for a bit over what may be fish or chicken, then cuts into it delicately. Her eyes never leave his face, though, and he’s a bit breathless at just how intently she looks him.

He shakes his head a bit to clear his thoughts and she smirks knowingly before taking a bite.

“Uh, right. Well, it’s just that I’ve been told the Blacks are very… _selective_ about who they relate with,” he says diplomatically. “And I’m… well, besides the obvious fact that I’m a halfblood, I also grew up all the way in Africa and I’m not exactly accustomed to British high society.”

Narcissa cleans her mouth with the cloth napkin delicately before reaching her hand to cover his on the table.

Harry stares at it.

He was certainly not expecting her to be so bold. And he also can’t believe how bloody good it feels. Simple hand holding — not even that. Merlin, he must be desperate for affection if a simple thing like this affects him so much.

They’d touched before, and he’d of course felt just as exhilarated, but it had been different. They were dancing and it was almost perfunctory. Almost. He could hide his reaction behind the notion that they were expected to do so, it wasn’t like they could dance without touching.

He could steal moments by bringing her closer, resting his head on her hair — and he did — by justifying it as feeling the music, getting lost in the moment.

This is deliberate. There is nothing to fall back on besides the fact that she seems to _want_ to touch him, and he stares at her hand for a long while, trying to catch up with his heart.

“I thought we’d been through this, Harry. I don’t care about your blood status.”

Harry clears his throat. “Right, yeah, but what about your family? I mean, uh, if this…” He waves a helpless hand in the air, the one not currently trapped but her wonderfully warm one. “If we get better acquainted and find that we enjoy each other’s company,” he settles for saying, forcing the wince from his face at the image of a disapproving Draco floating in his head. “Will they bring us problems? I don’t want to put you in an uncomfortable position, Narcissa. I don’t want you to be in the same situation as Andromeda.”

Narcissa hand tightens on his for a second before she pulls it away and goes back to her food.

She cuts the meat — whatever it is — a bit more forcefully, her movements just a bit sharper.

“Andromeda is a Black, Harry, and there are certain things you must understand about us. My family’s motto is _Toujours Pur_ , which of course refers to the bloodline but also to our commitment to magic. The insistence for us to always marry into pureblood families is so that we can keep our magic flowing through the generations as well as our traditions.”

Harry takes a sip of wine, warm and fruity against his tongue. “But I’m not—“

Narcissa tips her head in agreement. “I know. I know you’re not, but your family is magical, or at least half of it is, so you do have that same familial magic and traditions as we do.”

“So being a halfblood is not a problem?” he asks her, disbelieving. He can’t help it, it goes against everything he’s ever known about her family.

Narcissa sends him a little smile that could mean anything and takes a bite of her food. Harry’s eyes drop to her lips for a bit before he moves them to his own plate and takes a bite of the steak.

“Not for me, of course. And not for mother and father and grandfather Arcturus, as long as you carry on the traditions of the Hawthorne line.” She pauses, purses her lips as if reluctant to continue, or maybe just unhappy about what she wants to say. “Of course, some will look down on you for your muggle grandparents, I won’t lie to you. Aunt Walburga is especially vicious, but I’m also convinced she’s quite senile. So you must just ignore their stupidity,” she blithely says.

Harry’s a bit stunned.

Besides all the obvious, if her parents are supposedly so openminded, then that begs the question, “But what about Andromeda?”

She sighs a bit dejectedly and nods. “My sister is a Black, like I said. We don’t tolerate others dictating our lives and we certainly would never wait to be disinherited.”

Harry’s eyebrows rise a bit. “Are you saying she left first?”

Narcissa wipes her lips on the napkin. She puts a hand on the table and taps her fingers a few times before taking hold of the knife again.

“Naturally. She knew that Mother and Father wouldn’t approve of Ted. Not because he’s muggleborn. Or not completely,” she adds, although Harry can’t imagine how they’d have another reason. “Ted likes his muggle side,” she says, and now there’s the sneer he’d been searching for all this time.

He was starting to think something was seriously wrong with this version of the past. It’s good to know that not all things are different.

“And that’s a bad thing?”

She considers him carefully and he knows that she’s aware this could be a critical moment.

She sets her cutlery to the side and Harry follows suit, watching quietly as she organizes her thoughts.

“For Mother and Father, yes,” she starts to say, slowly. “They would accept him if he’d agree to a blood adoption by an old wizarding family, if he were open to follow our traditions and beliefs. But he’s not. He refused to consider the idea and he’s constantly saying that our way of life is archaic and outdated.” She frowns, showing her disapproval, and then shrugs a bit, a gesture which surprises him coming from her. “So Andromeda left before they could disinherit her.”

Harry blinks at her a few times, processing her words.

“But you still speak to her,” he says, wanting to satisfy that curiosity first.

Narcissa takes a sip of her wine and then resumes eating, precise in every movement.

“She’s my _sister_. Of course I still speak to her. She did try to cut ties with me, wanted to spare me from our family’s wrath in case they found out we still visit,” Narcissa says in a tone that clearly implies just how little she thought of that idea. “But I quickly convinced her she was being ridiculous.”

She chews on her food almost carelessly, obvious defiance radiating from her.

Oh, but they’re sneaky. Clearly no one in the family knows that they’re still in contact, not even Bellatrix since she’s quite certainly already joined Voldemort.

Harry’s got a thousand and one questions to follow up with but he decides to settle on, “What do you mean by blood adoption?”

Narcissa’s whole body pauses for just a second and then continues eating casually. She gives him a peculiar look. “You’ve never heard of it?”

“Uh, no.” He wonders if he should have, if it’s one of those pureblood things that are just assumed as known by everyone, but then he searches her face and she doesn’t seem that surprised.

“I suppose I can see why, the Hawthornes have always been a notoriously light family. A blood adoption, like most things relating to blood magic, has a bit of a dark connotation,” she says, lips pursed in disapproval. “It’s not Dark Magic though,” she vehemently says. “It’s not meant to harm anyone, quite the contrary.”

She reaches forward a bit in her seat, almost like she wants badly to convince him.

Harry takes a slow bite of his food and processes the information. “How does it work?”

She exhales a bit, then leans back against her chair. The light on the wall reflects on her earring and it shines a bit, catching his eye for a moment before he focuses back on her carefully neutral face.

“Well, there’s a ritual, much simpler than most blood magic rituals, actually. You take a drop of blood from both adoptive parents, mix it with the child’s blood, and add them to the base potion. Then you cast the spell and the child drinks the potion. It’s completely painless.”

The way she narrates, detached and collected, has him looking at her in thought. He wonders… “Have you witnessed one?”

When her eyes snap to him, the blue suddenly icy, Harry thinks he knows. They’re indeed very blue. He’d never thought about it before, of course, but it _is_ different.

“I was too young to remember,” she says, her posture suddenly stiff and she holds onto the fork a bit too tight, her knuckles getting white.

Harry initiates the contact this time, placing a gentle hand above hers. He’s not a particularly big man, not that much taller than her even, but her hand looks so very small beneath his.

“You don’t have to tell me today. Or at all.”

She looks at him, unblinking eyes darting all over his face as if analyzing every single feature, and Harry takes great care into making sure he looks neutral and understanding.

“Shall we finish the meal and then find somewhere more private?” she asks cautiously.

Harry nods. “Of course.”

* * *

They end up going to his place, at Harry’s suggestion. He wasn’t quite sure Narcissa would agree, what with it probably not being proper and whatnot, but she readily does. He thinks she must really want her privacy.

Harry watches her face as she takes in his ‘family’s’ ancestral home. It’s not big, nothing like the old money the Malfoys have, or even the Blacks, but it is spacious enough for a respectable wizarding home. Harry’s particularly fond of it with its comfortable furniture and warm colors. He was glad when he first saw it that he wouldn’t have to go through the trouble of renovating it because he certainly couldn’t have stomached living for five years in something as stifling as Malfoy Manor.

He hasn’t done much to the place since he moved in. Rearranged the furniture a bit, put up a few pieces of decoration he found at an antique fair. The porcelain vase was a particularly good find. The muggle lady who was selling it had no idea that the pictures moved, the leaves waving softly to the invisible breeze. It now stands proudly by his fireplace and he likes looking at it a lot. It’s calming. He even thinks the picture changes a bit every day, but he hasn't had it for long enough to be absolutely sure.

Narcissa’s face is one of curiosity as he shows her around, and in the end he thinks that her small smile means she approves. He doesn’t know why, precisely, but it does make him feel a bit warm inside.

Allie brings them tea in the parlor, and Narcissa’s eyes widen comically at the sight of the little house elf dressed in a cute little flowery dress, her head wrapped in an elegant scarf and a small necklace dangling from her thin neck.

Harry smiles. “Thank you, Allie.”

“You is welcome, Master Harry.”

She disappears with a pop and Narcissa still has that shocked look on her face for a while after she’s gone.

Harry chuckles and then grins widely when she blushes.

They’re seated on a sofa, wide enough that they don’t have to be pressed on top of each other, but they’re still close. There are two other armchairs in the room along with a loveseat, so distance is clearly not the point.

She curls a strand of hair around her ear. It falls into loose curls which he thinks are magicked. She changes her hair a lot, he’s noticed, but he thinks it’s originally straight. At least she wears it like that more often.

“I… Is she a free elf?”

Harry shakes his head. “Oh, no.” His voice is plainly fond; he’s become quite a fan of Allie’s in the six months he’s been here. “I’ve just been suggesting to her that a new uniform would favor her features much more, and in the end she did agree that the tea towel needed to go. But she’s very adamant that they’re not clothes,” Harry pointedly says. “It’s her _uniform_ ,” he adds with a wink.

Narcissa blinks at him for a moment and then her melodious laugh warms up the room.

“You are one very strange wizard, Harry Hawthorne.”

Harry can’t help but send her a roguish grin. “In a good way, I hope?”

Narcissa purses her lips as if she’s trying to control her smile but then loses that battle and lets out a mirthful chuckle.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Hmm. That’s good to know. We wouldn’t want you in bad company, although I’m quite sure you could take very good care of yourself.”

Narcissa smirks, reaches for a biscuit, and takes a decidedly mean bite out of it before she answers with, “Naturally. I _am_ a Black.”

Harry laughs despite himself. He is very much aware of the danger of Black women.

“Of course.”

Narcissa’s smile dwindles a bit then, and Harry knows that their previous conversation is about to be unpaused.

He pours her a cup of tea so she can have more time to collect herself and decide on her words. She sends him a grateful smile and holds on to the saucer with one hand, the other stirring in the sugar in infinite rounds.

Harry gets lost in the motion for a bit, the spoon going in circle after silent circle.

He blinks, coming out of the trance, and touches her knee gingerly when she seems too lost in thoughts. She meets his eyes with a bashful smile.

Narcissa takes a sip, finally, blowing on it delicately to cool it. “I apologize. I was lost in thought.”

He pours himself a cup and her eyes follow the dark tea falling on his cup. “Memories?”

“Hmm. Yes.” She shakes her head lightly and lets out a mirthless chuckle. “You know, most people don’t even notice it? I’ve only ever had one girl in school ask me why I look so different from my sisters. Mother is blonde, though, you see. So of course it looks like I took after her.”

Harry chews on his biscuit. “But you didn’t.”

“Oh, I suppose I might, at that. I never actually asked what my birth parents look like,” she blithely says.

Harry is not fooled though, he can see the way her shoulders are tight, how her hands hold the saucer just a little too forcefully, and how the corner of her eyes is just the tiniest bit tense.

He wonders if this is the first time she’s ever talked about this with anyone and thinks that it might just be. And he has no idea what to do with that information.

“You don’t have to…” he starts to say, but she places the saucer down on the coffee table and turns to face him, every bit of her exuding determination.

“I was born to two muggle parents,” she says, her chin up, voice cool and collected and almost detached. Almost.

Harry has to very forcefully not make any reaction to that comment because — _what the bloody hell_.

He was expecting the adoption, he was not expecting the muggle parents. At all. He’d thought she was going to say she was some distant cousin or something.

Narcissa places her hands on her lap, steady, motionless. Her arms are tense with her intent to keep absolutely still.

Harry places his tea on the table and leans his arm on the back of the sofa, casually facing her. He waits.

“Mother and Father have a country house in a muggle village. They don’t like mixing with muggles, of course, but one day Bella was so very insistent on going to the Christmas market in the village that they reluctantly agreed.”

Harry almost has another conniption right there. Bellatrix interested in a muggle Christmas market? Surely this couldn’t be true.

Narcissa goes on as if Harry isn’t internally freaking out.

“It was at the market where they noticed a toy floating away from one stall, and they thought it was Bella or Andy, the only two magical children around. But then the toy floated to my stroller and they were understandably a bit shocked. They thought they were the only magical family in the area.”

She pauses then, reaches again for her cup of tea but decides against it halfway.

Harry summons a bottle of firewhiskey and two glasses and wordlessly pours them both a healthy tumbler. He offers her one, holding on to the other.

She takes a long sip without a word and Harry diligently follows suit.

“So,” she continues, voice less steady. She twirls the glass around a bit, the liquid swaying inside. “Mother and Father began to approach me and my… parents,” she forces out, the disdain evident in every letter. “But then, before they could even reach us, my parents started yelling and shaking me. I started crying, naturally, I’d only wanted the toy, I’m sure I had no idea why they were so upset. Mother heard them arguing with each other about the exorcism that was supposed to have _fixed_ me and how they couldn’t keep up anymore if I was clearly possessed by the devil. How they couldn’t keep _me_.”

She swallows hard and Harry takes her free hand and interlaces their fingers.

Narcissa takes a shallow breath and composes her face before she continues, this time complete detachment on her every feature.

Harry doesn’t like the look on her one bit.

“They approached the couple,” she says, her eyes all but empty, and Harry doesn’t miss the sudden omission of the word parents. “And they quickly convinced them that they could help, so they went to the muggles’ house. Bella and Andy started playing with me while Mother and Father spoke to them. I was just under two, Andy was four, and Bella was seven. Too big to want to play with babies, but she liked me.”

For the first time since she started the story, there’s a small, reluctant smile on her lips at the mention of her sister. Harry wonders what the woman was like before she became completely crazy. Or if the only exception for her sadistic impulses had been her sisters, back then.

Narcissa twirls her glass again, looks at it, takes a sip that finishes the whole thing, then places it on the table.

Harry is admittedly quite impressed. His own glass is still half-full, dangling precariously on his folded leg.

“Mother and Father explained to the muggles that I was a witch, that I clearly wasn’t possessed by the devil or such nonsense,” she spits out, another crack in her carefully controlled veneer. “But they wouldn’t hear of it. They said witchcraft was the work of the devil and we should all be burned at the stake. Father lost his temper, naturally. He cursed them,” she disinterestedly says. “Mother convinced him not to kill them. For my sake, she said.” She purses her lips, a look on her face which is entirely contradictory to the tone of her voice which would have him believe that she didn’t care one bit if her father had killed them. “In the end, they took me home and Obliviated the muggles.”

Harry’s brain rushes to process the whole thing but it all feels quite a bit too much.

Narcissa Black is a _muggleborn_? The _Blacks_ actually adopted a muggleborn child into their family? What on earth. He must have surely ended up in another dimension. It’s the only logical explanation.

He’s pulled out of his shock, however, by her trembling hand within his. He looks down, their fingers intertwined, absently notes how well they seem to fit together.

He tugs a bit, wanting to get her attention. When she meets his eyes, there’s no hiding the pain in them, and Harry understands that feeling all too well.

It’s horrible to feel unwanted, unloved simply because of who you are. He felt like that all his life with his so-called family, he can’t imagine what it’s like to be rejected by one’s parents.

Without thinking, he puts his glass on the table and wraps an arm around her shoulders. She stiffens, then gradually allows herself to relax in his arms. She’s soft, warm, and feels so small.

Her shoulder digs against his chest and it’s a bit bony but he doesn’t mind one bit. He leans his chin on her head. Her hair tickles, makes his nose twitch a bit. It smells like sunshine, and he again thinks that it has to be some sort of charm because how can her hair smell like sunshine and her skin like the stars?

Harry doesn’t even know what those things are supposed to smell like, if anything, but they do anyway. They smell like Narcissa.

After a long beat of silence, she finally clears her throat, her voice the slightest bit wet as she says, “You understand now? I don’t hate muggleborns, I’d be hating myself. But I do hate that sort of muggles.”

And Harry sighs. “I get it. I do. And you have every reason to.”

She rubs her thumb on her fingers, back and forth, back and forth. “I know… I know they’re not all like that, there are good ones and bad ones just like with wizards. But you can’t blame me for not wanting anything to do with any of them.”

“I know. I do understand,” Harry replies, because he does.

He desperately wants to tell her just how well he understands but he can’t. He can’t tell her about himself. No one is supposed to know about Harry Potter in this time.

Her fingers stop, then she starts tapping them on his leg. Softly, just the tips, but Harry’s eyes are immediately drawn to them.

It reminds him of someone playing the piano. The movements don’t feel random — there’s a purpose to them, a rhythmic variation. There’s an increase of pressure here, a softening there, a pause.

Harry looks and he thinks that that’s exactly were her fingers belong — playing soundless music on his body.

After a while she says, “I was lucky, you see. I was adopted into a proper wizarding family and I’m a Black in every sense of the word, even by blood. The only thing the potion doesn’t change is physical appearance.”

It clicks then. “Hence the blue eyes.” He pauses, blinks through a rapidly processed connection, says kind of in a daze, “And the name. They all have star names.”

Her fingers pause their invisible music for a beat, then start again.

“Hmm. Yes. I refused to answer to anything else, and they liked the name well enough. Bellatrix took to calling me Cissy almost immediately. Out of spite, I reckon,” she says, an indulgent smile on her voice.

Harry can hear Bellatrix too, the way she always used to say it, almost like she was cooing at her sister. There had always been an undercurrent there.

The music on his thigh changes, her fingertips press more firmly, more demanding. Harry can almost feel the reverberations through his body.

“The Blacks always have grey eyes,” she says, the taping growing more majestic. “It passes down from parent to child along with their magic. My children will probably have grey eyes as well, unless their father has his own family magic with its specific traits. A lot of the old families have them. The Malfoys always have that pale almost white hair, or the Weasleys red hair, or even the Potters with that messy shag of dark hair.”

Her fingers keep on playing on his thigh and Harry very nearly chokes on air at her last comment.

Fuck. He’d completely forgotten just how recognizable the Potter hair is.

Harry had been reluctant to change his appearance, it just didn’t feel right, so they’d been counting on the fact that most purebloods are related in some way or another to explain away his resemblance to the Potter heir — besides the fact that James is his father, of course.

But they had not taken into consideration that maybe those damned inherited traits where deeply connected to the family’s magic and helped identify its members. Hell, Harry hadn’t even heard anyone talk about it like that, like it was a _thing_.

It’s probably one of the thousand little things purebloods just _know_.

He half wants to rip his hair out.

Instead, with forced nonchalance, he chuckles at Narcissa’s comment and says, “I did always wonder about the Malfoys. I half considered the possibility that they use some kind of permanent charm on the children as soon as they’re born.”

Her fingers freeze midair. To his delight, she snorts in amusement, and the sound makes something deep inside him crack open.

Narcissa laughs in his arms and Harry turns to face her fully and is suddenly overwhelmed by just how beautiful she is.

Her eyes are so alive and her features are soft and lovely, full lips forming a perfect bow, and he’s quite a bit awestruck.

She makes him feel…

Just _feel_.

He never thought he’d find that type of feeling with her, never thought for one second that she could be so captivating, so interesting, so unlike anyone else he’s met.

She meets his eyes and her laughter kind of freezes midway, and he thinks his face must be showing everything he’s feeling because there’s a sudden blush in her cheeks and a determination in her eyes, and next thing he knows she’s pressed forward into him until her lips meet his in a tender, almost shy kiss.

Harry’s heart jumps at the contact and then promptly starts trying to beat its way out of his chest at full speed. He raises a hand to her cheek, both to help steady himself and also because he just needs to touch her.

She breaks off the kiss and leans into his hand and there’s a fire in her eyes when she looks at him and Harry just…

Fuck. He’s utterly and completely fucked.

“You’re stunning,” he whispers, voice a bit hoarse.

She smiles, pleased. “You’re quite something yourself, Mr. Hawthorne.”

Harry really wishes he could hear his real name from those teasing lips.

He’s so very fucked.

He leans in again because he obviously can’t do anything else, and she meets him eagerly in a much more passionate kiss. Narcissa pulls him closer by his shirt and Harry puts his hands around her waist, but it’s still not nearly enough for what he needs.

But he can’t… Merlin, he can’t go that far with her when he’s hiding such a monumental secret.

And what is he even _doing_? This woman is supposed to marry Lucius Malfoy and have a ridiculously blond and snotty baby and she very well can’t do that while he’s busy snogging her, now can she?

Abruptly coming to his senses, Harry reluctantly pulls off.

Narcissa is all flushed cheeks and dazed eyes and happy smiles. She immediately makes him regret his determination to break off the kiss.

“I can’t say I wasn’t hoping for that kind of passion from you, Harry, reserved though you may seem,” she coyly says.

Harry swallows dryly. “You’re… a very hard woman to resist.”

Her smile turns into a smug smirk and she shakes her head a bit and says, “So don’t.”

When she moves to kiss him again, fire burning in her eyes, Harry submits to it for a moment because he’s apparently incapable of doing otherwise, but then he forces himself to get under control.

“Let’s, uh, let’s take it slow, yeah? See where this leads?”

Narcissa gives him a look that is far too ominous, but allows his retreat with only a smirk on her lips and a composed, “Of course.”

Harry runs a hand through his wild hair and discretely adjusts his trousers.

When he meets her eyes again, he knows that he’s in far too much trouble.


	4. Chapter 4

Harry tries.

Truly.

He’s prepared to offer several pensive memories as proof of just how hard he tries to not succumb to his desires. But. Well. He’s only human, and clearly a weak one at that.

So he’s hoping that Draco will somehow find it in himself to forgive him.

Because otherwise, he’s a very dead man.

Harry sees Narcissa several times a week, a lot of which end up being at his house, and there is absolutely no way that he can avoid falling into her arms and losing himself in her heated kisses.

Harry has done a lot of impossible things in his life, but this is just one that is clearly impossible to do:

He cannot resist Narcissa Black.

Narcissa, for her part, is clearly enjoying his lack of restrain. Obviously she has no way of knowing just how much she’ll probably regret those decisions in the future — if only because they will resort in the death of her former lover at the hands of her son, and then Draco will have to join Lucius in Azkaban.

Truly, Harry should be trying to prevent his friend from going to prison but… Bugger if his mother isn’t the sexiest woman he’s ever met.

So, of course, when Narcissa comes over for dinner wearing a sinfully tight black dress, lips red and full and smirking, eyes blue and bright and smoldering, Harry decides that to heck with his morals and the possible imprisonment of his future friend.

All the feelings he’s been trying to keep at bay for the last couple of months come tumbling out at the vision in front of him and Harry gladly gives in.

He doesn’t even wait until they have dinner; he gets up from the sofa to greet her at the fireplace and proceeds to kiss the living hell out of her. Narcissa lets out this breathy moan of approval which only serves to inscribe in him the rightness of this particular path. She’s warm and inviting and sensually leans into his body, pressing herself closer, and Harry’s suddenly lost every last one of his remaining compunctions.

Later, after they’ve lost themselves in each other, Harry considers that perhaps he really should have tried to have more self-control. If only because he realizes that he will absolutely not be able to stop doing this.

And that is bad. That is very bad indeed.

Narcissa, laying by his side, arches her back sensually before sitting up on the edge of the bed.

Harry is left looking quite dumbly at her smooth and perfectly curved back. His dick stirs a bit and he very nearly snaps his eyes at it in shock. He has just had the most intense orgasm of his life, there is no way he can go again.

Other parts of him clearly disagree.

Thinking that he better distract himself from more thoughts of sex, Harry runs his fingers down Narcissa’s back. Her hair falls down her whole back, straight this time, and he runs his fingers from side to side, freeing up new paths for him to look at. There are a few red marks where he’d held on to her a bit too tight and he smiles proudly at the sight.

“Still up for that dinner?” he asks, desperate for a distraction. Now that he says it he actually realizes just how hungry he is, so that’s certainly a happy coincidence.

She turns her head to him and smirks. “I did work up quite the appetite for some mysterious reason.”

Harry grins. “Good, come on then, Allie must be going out of her mind with having to wait so long to serve dinner.”

Narcissa chuckles and Harry maybe stares for a bit too long at the sight of her getting dressed. But then he thinks she’s entirely to blame because there’s absolutely no reason for her to do so as sensually as she had removed them.

No reason at all.

Dinner is lovely, as always — Allie is a brilliant cook, Harry’s trying to convince her to come work for him when he goes back to his time — and they chat easily about their days, an easiness to their interactions that Harry hadn’t dared hope for.

It’s like she fits perfectly into his life, has walked into it seamlessly, and his heart and home have opened up previously unknown rooms just for her.

Harry could never have imagined that the Narcissa he knows in the future would one day be so important to him.

He still struggles to see it sometimes, still feels like he’s grasping at straws trying to reconcile the woman who looked at him with nothing but disdain to this one who looks at him with immeasurable fondness.

It’s all a bit jarring. And absolutely wonderful.

They finish dinner and retire to the parlor, Harry sitting leisurely on the sofa while Narcissa explores the nooks and crannies.Her innate curiosity amuses him to no end; she’s always striving to know more about everything that sparks her interest. Seeing as Harry seems to hold her interest at the moment, it’s only natural that she would be inspecting the room for clues about him.

He watches her with a fond smile, mind placidly remembering various moments spent with her over the past months.

When she calls him, he’s a bit lost in thought at first and takes a while to reply. He murmurs out a “Hmm?” but it’s perfunctory at best and he’s still thinking about that time a few days ago when he had taken her to the cinema.

It had been Narcissa’s first time, and she’d walked in quite reluctantly, nose turned up at everything from the seats to the popcorn to the people. Not even fifteen minutes into the film and she’d been completely engrossed by it, her eyes never deviating from the screen.

Harry had watched Narcissa instead of the film. Her eyes got wide and excited along with the characters’ exploits. She’d laugh heartily, like she completely forgot where she was and how she was supposed to behave, and got lost in the magic of it all — muggle magic that it was. Her hands would dip into the popcorn bowl on Harry’s lap so often that he gave up on eating it just so that she wouldn’t run out.

In the end, Narcissa had come out with shiny eyes and very Slytherin-like suggested that perhaps she would need a bigger sample to make an appropriate judgment.

Harry had looked her with a smile so fond that she’d rolled her eyes and kissed him.

Harry’s abruptly brought back to the present when Narcissa sends him a stinging hex to get his attention. Because of course she does.

Harry yelps and she chuckles evilly. He gets up from the sofa to join her, grumbling about sadistic Black women as he goes.

Narcissa merely looks at him with an arched brow, her lips curled smugly.

“Oh, you’ve found the family tree,” he notes when he reaches her.

It was the first thing he’d done when he got to the house almost six months ago. He’d gone straight for the family tree, which in the future already contained his forged name, and was relieved to find that it did so now as well.

Allie was a bit surprised of course, and he’d had to explain to her who he really was. But she’d been bound to him nonetheless and was happy to serve a new master, even if he wasn’t technically part of the family. It surely beat waiting for some long lost relative to claim the inheritance and her along with it.

Narcissa looks at him and smiles mischievously.

“I was looking for some Potter blood to explain that hair,” she says. “But it’s surprisingly absent.”

Harry feels his face blanch and he knows her perceptive eyes will catch it but he’s too late to stop it.

He should laugh at her teasing and joke back and make sure that she can’t read what she’s certainly reading right now in his face with her too-intuitive eyes — which is that he very much wishes he could’ve stopped this before it became inevitable because she deserves the truth.

She deserves Harry Potter, not a fiction.

“Harry?”

He effortfully drags his eyes from the Potter-less tapestry to Narcissa’s quizzical face and he feels a heaviness build inside him which only makes her eyes crease with worry.

“What is it? What’s wrong.”

He braces himself and takes a steadying breath.

“Narcissa, I… I think it’s time I told you the truth.”

He sees the moment her face dawns in comprehension and shuts off, how her posture becomes stiff and defensive, how her arms remain firmly by her side but her fists curl with tension.

Harry wants to claw his own heart out for doing this to her.

“You’ve been lying, then,” she says, an iciness to her tone that he’d only heard on her future self and he doesn’t like it one bit.

It doesn’t match this Narcissa who is so warm and caring at all.

Yet, at this moment, bracing herself for hurt and betrayal, he recognizes the posture of the ice queen which he’d once identified her as.

He bites his lips and then sighs, his lower lip wobbling a bit with the force of it. “Come sit with me? Please?”

It’s a testament to her feelings for him that she actually acquiesces, visibly reluctant though it is.

He thinks that maybe he’s not completely blundered this whole thing up.

Just maybe.

He sits on the sofa and breathes a sigh in relief when she joins him there. She sits right on the edge though, as far away from him as possible, and he forces himself not to stretch out his arm over the backrest towards her.

He looks at his nails, pulls a bit at his index one with the tip of his thumb. Narcissa waits. When he gathers his thoughts he says, “I know you’re going to hate me for this, and believe me, I hate myself a little bit too, but I need you to swear on your magic not to repeat this to anyone unless I give you permission to do so.”

He looks up at her, tentative, afraid of what he might find. Her eyes take on an immediate affronted and distrustful gleam and Harry has to put considerable effort into not reaching out for her hand like he wants to.

“Please. Please, just— Just trust me. Just do this for me and I’ll tell you everything. Please, Narcissa.”

He thinks maybe he does a pitiful enough job at begging because she slowly and warily pulls out her wand and swears a quick oath, the magic flowing between them in a golden sheen.

Harry breaths out in relief.

“Thank you. Thank you for trusting me.”

“Clearly not something you reciprocate with.”

Harry winces at the iciness in her tone, but he supposes he deserves it.

“It’s not that at all, Cissa.” When she visibly recoils at the use of the nickname, Harry feels acid burn inside him. “Narcissa. I do trust you, you must believe that, otherwise I wouldn’t have even suggested this. It’s just that I needed a magical oath because I have to make sure you’d never be able to tell anyone, even under torture.”

She pales at that, a million thoughts visibly running through her mind.

He pulls his leg up and rests one arm on his bent knees. He’s wearing a grey pair of sweatpants which somehow already have a hole in them even though he’d bought all of his clothes when he first got to this new time.

He pokes at the hole with his fingers for a while and then finally meets her eyes again.

“My name’s not Harry Hawthorne. It’s Harry Potter, and I’ve come back thirty years into the past.”

He doesn’t take his eyes off her as he says it and so he sees the way her eyes sharpen at the admission of a lie, the way they snap to his hair in the acknowledgment that she was indeed right, the way her brow furrows at the mention of time travel.

She doesn’t say anything though, and Harry’s not quite sure how to take that, so he decides to power through.

“I’m an Auror. I’m also— well, I guess that’s not important at the moment, we’ll come back to that later.” Her eyes narrow. “I will, I swear. But the important thing to help you make sense of everything for now is that I’m an Auror and I’ve been sent on a mission to retrieve something which was destroyed, or will be destroyed I suppose, and is quite crucial to saving the magical world.”

Narcissa’s lips press in annoyance and she does a little shake of her head, like she was going to do something else and then aborted the movement.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning and cut the dramatically stylized summaries, Mr. Potter. I think it’s more than time for some straightforwardness.”

Shite. The way she says it, the Mr. Potter, her voice curt and dripping with vitriol, that once-familiar sneer on her face, it’s the last thing he wanted to see. Not on her, not on the woman who somehow captured his heart in such a short time.

“I… yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”

He runs a hand through his hair and leans despondently back into the backrest. Narcissa keeps her posture perfectly straight and as far away from him as she can without actually sitting on the floor.

“My name is Harry Potter and I… I’m the Boy Who Lived,” he says with a wry smile.

He tells her the story of his life — the story of her future — of a war and a prophecy and an orphaned child. Of a muggle family who despised him for being different and a cupboard with a couple of spiders to keep him company when he was too scared of being alone. Of a giant who came to rescue him and a magical castle that quickly became home. Of his first friends and the discovery of a whole other fascinating world. Of a madman who kept trying to kill him, who managed to come back to life, who started another war and almost won. Of a godfather who fell through a veil and an honorary uncle who died in the final battle along with so, so many others.

He tells her of how he died, of how he considered, for a moment, not coming back, of how, after he did, things had just been so hard that he’d almost regretted his decision.

Harry tells her of her future husband and her son. Of how she saved him in the end, when it mattered, and how Draco saved him too and how they became friends, later on. Of how Draco is happy, an Unspeakable along with Hermione, of how they somehow managed to turn their mutual hatred of each other into mutual respect and friendship, and how that evolved to love.

In the end, his voice is hoarse and he has tears down his cheeks and Narcissa has long since come closer to him until she’s practically pulled Harry into her arms and proceeded to caress him everywhere her hands can reach.

He plays with the hole on his trousers again, can’t seem to lift his eyes any more than that after having told her everything contained in his heart.

“There’s a virus,” he says, the words coming out like gravel in his throat. “It’s attacking every magical creature on the planet. It’s slow-acting, asymptomatic at first, then it starts weakening the body, feels like just a flu, until finally, it starts affecting your ability to do magic, to feel it. Some people stop seeing magical places. They get to Diagon Alley and they can’t get in because they can’t find the entrance which they know is there. They suddenly see ruins instead of Hogwarts. It’s terrifying, Narcissa. There are ashwinders burning from their own fire, house-elves unable to use their magic, dragons losing their fire, vampires dying by the minute. The werewolves get cured though, so I don’t suppose it’s a hundred percent bad.”

She pauses, goes completely still. “Merlin. How…”

“It’s our fault,” Harry says, voice desponded and angry and helpless. “It’s all our fault. We — humans — we’re too curious, we always want to know more, to be smarter than the next person, to defy the laws of Nature. We _created_ the virus.”

He’s made the hole bigger, he can almost fit his little finger through. He mentally prepares himself for the talking down Allie will give him when she sees it but it’s not enough to stop him.

His mouth forms an unpleasant twist. “Some Unspeakable created the virus, supposedly trying to figure out how our magic works, what actually makes us magical. The virus is specifically designed to attack the magical genes in our body and it virtually turns us into muggles. Well, for us humans, of course. Other beings simply lose their magic. It’s bloody terrifying.”

Narcissa takes in a sharp breath. She still has her arms around him and he feels them tremble slightly.

“So did you come to stop it from happening?”

Harry shakes his head.

“You can’t undo what has already happened. The virus was released in our fifth year when we practically destroyed the Department of Mysteries, and it’s been slowly spreading ever since. Like I said, it acts really slowly, so it wasn’t until about five years ago that we first started noticing it.”

It had been horrifying. They had no idea what was happening at first, only that people were somehow losing the ability to see magical places, to perform the hardest spells. It took a while for them to realize that they were actually losing their magic, loosing who they were.

It was complete panic. For the creatures, especially, as they rely on their magic to maneuver around a world made to ostracize them. Without it, they were vulnerable, trapped.

And the worse was that they had no idea what was causing it or how it spread.

When they finally figured it out, coming back in time was the only solution to saving their whole world.

“So then? What are you doing here?”

“Because we know from surviving records Draco and Hermione found at the Department, that the same Unspeakable had also come up with a cure. A countermeasure,” Harry explains. “This was decades ago, even from now, so the woman in question is long dead and we couldn’t ask her about it. She also didn’t actually leave any instructions, neither on the actual virus nor on the cure, everything was presumably in the same room which was destroyed.”

“So you came back for the cure,” she says, keen eyes wide with understanding.

Harry nods. “Yes. No one touches it from here to the time it all blows up. It’s been pretty much forgotten about so I can just take it and bring it to the future with me, along with the notes.”

And he’d done it too. It had been easier than it should have been, especially considering that it was the Department of Mysteries, where top-secret research took place. All it had taken was one trip with his invisibility cloak and half an hour search and that was it.

It was all quite anti-climatic.

The cure now rests in his mokeskin pouch along with the few belongings from his time he brought back.

“Then why don’t you just destroy the virus as well?” Narcissa asks, and she sounds almost angry about it.

Harry turns to properly face her. He shakes his head. “Because it’s already happened. I can’t not make something happen which has already happened and is the cause for me to be here. Does that make sense?”

Her eyes widen with understanding. “It would create a paradox.”

“Exactly. I can take the cure because we only assume that it’s been destroyed along with the rest but, for all we know, it wasn’t even there in the first place, maybe I’d already removed it.”

“A time loop.”

He nods. “Time has a funny way of working like that, as my experience with time-turners can attest to.”

“But this isn’t a time-turner, is it? Time-turners don’t go back more than a day.”

Harry hums and nods in agreement. “No, they don’t. That’s why it took us so long to find a solution. Draco and Hermione found a book in the Malfoy library, easily one of the Darkest books I’ve ever touched,” he says with a shudder. “But it had the exact ritual we needed. It allowed me to come back to a time where I wouldn’t be born yet — it was very specific that it had to be that — and then I have to wait five years until the magic garners enough energy to send me back to the exact time I left, this time with the cure in tow.”

Narcissa stares at him in silence for a long moment, her face a myriad of emotions. When she finally speaks, Harry is surprised to hear the pain she doesn’t try to conceal.

“Five years?”

He nods slowly, his own heart heavy with the knowledge.

He’d known about it, of course. Objectively. But it was all something that was very abstract. When he’d considered the arguments against dating her, he had mostly focused on the fact that one, she was Draco’s mom, two, she hated his guts, three, she was Draco’s mom and hated his guts. He had never thought he would be devastated at only having five years with her.

He didn’t think what it would do to her to have him just leave after that time. Just disappear, had he not said anything to her about who he was as he’d intended to do until she all but forced him to tell her.

He feels a surge of guilt, deep within his stomach. It comes up corroding like acid, all the way up until he has to swallow hard, and then it’s still not gone.

He hesitantly takes a strand of her hair and twirls it around his fingers. It’s really soft, darker than Draco’s but still a very pale blonde. He quite likes it. He quite likes _her_. More than that, actually.

“Yes. I… I can’t be here when I’m born, and even if I wished to stay for longer, the ritual will pull me back, Cissa, no matter how hard I fight it.”

When she doesn’t react badly to the nickname he breathes a little easier.

“Would…” She swallows. “Would you _want_ to fight it?”

Harry looks at her ardently. “Yes. _Yes_. For you, I would, Cissa, without a question. Of course I would.”

Her eyes fill with sorrow then, and Harry cannot imagine what it’s like to be barely twenty years old and be told that the life she has waiting ahead of her is nothing like she would have wanted.

He doesn’t know what he’d do if it were the other way around, if he’d been told he’d marry someone whose ideals were so incongruous with his, that he’d be faced with a lifetime of anxiety, knowing the future and not being able to stop it.

Harry understands then, for the first time, exactly why Narcissa Malfoy has always looked at him with contempt.

_He left her_.

He left her and he doomed her to thirty years of knowing exactly what is going to happen to everyone she cares about and being utterly unable to stop it.

He looks at her in horror.

“Oh god. Oh Merlin, _Cissa_ , what have I done. I… Christ. I didn’t mean to put this burden on you. _Oh my god_.”

He gets up abruptly, madly pacing in front of her, his hands pulling at his hair but the physical pain doesn’t even process compared to the much more piercing one in his heart. He is a horrible, _horrible_ person. He had no right, no right at all to do this to her. He _cares_ about her. Cares so much that it almost hurts sometimes and yet he did this to her.

“I can’t believe I just doomed you to thirty years of complete misery. I can’t—

She snaps at him, her tone sharp. “Stop it.” But he’s too far gone.

He pulls at his hair continuously and paces back and forth in front of the couch, back and forth. He’s a horrible person. How could he?

He lifts a desperate hand to his forehead. It’s cold with sweat. “Cissa. I can’t do that to you.” He stops in front of her just as abruptly as he'd gotten up and he takes her face in his hands, pleading with everything in him. “Please. _Please_ let me Obliviate you.”

Narcissa’s eyes blaze with anger and she gets up in a flash. His hands fall limply to his side, useless. 

“ _Harry_. Stop it. You are _not_ Obliviating me.”

“Cissa, please.” He looks at her with pleading desperation but her expression remains resolute and he almost breaks. “Do you realize how horrible your life is going to be? It’s hard enough for me and I barely know anyone from this time, and Merlin knows I’ve made very sure not to run into my family so I’m not reminded…” He takes her face in his hands again, and she reaches for it, grabs his wrists until it almost hurts. “ _Please_ , Cissa.”

She vigorously shakes her head, his hands shake with it. “No. I absolutely refuse, Harry. I am not going to forget about you so you'd best cease with this ridiculous idea.”

He pauses, blinks at her, then frowns. “I wouldn’t— Not me, not now. Just everything after.”

He wouldn’t erase her memory of him, wouldn’t leave her with a hole that big, not on her mind nor her heart. He would never be that cruel, even if he’s established he’s a horrible, thoughtless, selfish person.

Narcissa sends him a look which has him reeling back, his hands dropping to his side as if scalded.

“So I would remember Harry Hawthorne, a man who went to Uagadou and can do wandless magic and can talk to snakes,” she says scathingly. “I like that man. Even if most of him is a lie. But he’s not _you_. You, everything you believe in, that is because you’re Harry Potter, darned Boy Who Lived to save the world and— _No_. I won’t forget you. I refuse.”

Harry can do nothing but stare at her for a long moment and Narcissa stares defiantly back, her eyes never leaving his or losing their fire.

She’s breathless like this. He thinks for one wild moment that she looks like she was born for this. Born to fight for what she believes in, born to fight for the people she cares for.

He wonders how he got so lucky that she cares for him this much. Doesn’t think he deserves it at all, not with how utterly selfish he was.

He takes a step forward, small, hesitant. He’s almost touching her, chest to chest, and can feel the heat she radiates. He thinks most of it is pure fury, both directed at him and at the world.

“Cissa,” he says beseechingly, though he’s not even sure what he’s begging for, if it’s for her own sake or for his.

She merely shakes her head and stares him down, unmovable in her determination.

“No. I won’t lose you, and you’re not going to make me.”

Harry’s face crumbles. His heart crumbles just along with it. It collapses in the pit of his stomach, pitiful and fragmented.

“I’m already going to leave,” he brokenly says. “I’m already going to _have_ to leave you.”

She nods sternly, but her throat bobs, betraying her emotion. “I know. But I won’t let you take away my memories of you. And I won’t let you make me fall in love with a man who doesn’t exist.”

Harry looks at her for a long while, the words crashing through him, not really processing. She is… _everything_. Absolutely everything, and he can’t comprehend the thought that he might be everything for her too.

His hand raises a bit, as if reaching for her. It gives up halfway and he doesn’t have the strength to force it back. He pushes out her name through his lips, a whispered “Narcissa…” which is so filled with reverence that he wonders how he could ever have said it any other way.

She stands up impossibly straighter and raises her chin up defiantly. Her eyes are bright, so bright, and they meet his dead-on, demanding nothing less than his full attention. As if he ever had a chance of doing anything else.

“I love you, Harry Potter, and I’ll be damned if you try to stop me.”


	5. Chapter 5

No matter how much Harry tries to convince her, Narcissa won’t hear of it.

It gets to the point where she actually puts a silencing spell on him a few days later and the look she gives him when he lifts it up wandlessly and silently is enough for him to keep quiet on his own.

She hasn’t left his house in five days, only replying with an unconcerned, “Mother and father have gone on vacation to the continent,” when he asks if her absence won’t be missed.

Not that he’s complaining. He loves having her here, loves seeing her share his space, how her presence fills every corner of the previously too-empty house.

And he is also madly in love with her.

But he can’t bring himself to say the words. Not now. Not when he still thinks that there’s a chance she’ll reconsider his offer to Obliviate him.

She _has_ to. Harry can’t handle the thought that he’s going to leave her alone for twenty-five years with the burden of knowing a whole society will almost destroy itself and being unable to stop it.

So far, Harry has refused to tell her any more details of the future than he already foolishly has. She knows his parents will die, along with Sirius, who, though not her favorite cousin by any means, if still family. She knows about Remus and Dumbledore, about Severus as well. Harry’s only consolation is that she at least knows Voldemort will die too, even if the bastard is determined to take out half the world with him.

But it’s not a major consolation by any means.

The mere thought of leaving her impotent to change anything, of knowing how her son will suffer because of his father’s choices, is enough to send him on a spiral of self-loathing until Narcissa finally snaps.

“That’s quite enough moping to last us a lifetime, Harry James Potter.”

He blinks up at her in surprise and finds her standing in front of him, dressed to go out, a determined look on her face.

She looks down on him with her utmost Black expression and says, “We are on a limited time schedule and I will not allow you to squander it any longer. So you will get off your bloody arse and take me on a date. Now.”

Harry’s mouth hangs open for a moment before he snaps it shut and springs to his feet.

If her tone wasn’t enough of a wake-up call, the fact that this is the first time he’s heard her curse certainly is.

He can’t help but look at her in wonder, and when her face softens he smiles apologetically.

“I love you, you know?” he says, the words tumbling out of his mouth completely without his permission.

His eyes widen a bit to mimic hers, surprised at his own confession. He certainly hadn’t planned to say it any time soon, couldn’t bring himself to say it, but he’d taken one look at her and suddenly it was just impossible _not_ to say it.

Narcissa, for her part, recovers much quickly, and her smile morphs into something so radiant that Harry stares at her, all blubbering smiles and dopey eyes.

She kisses him, then, soft and loving, and he melts. Just a tad. Definitely a manly amount.

When they break off, she has a smug look on her face but it can’t quite hide the pure joy pouring out of her.

“Go get dressed, we have a relationship to celebrate.”

Harry can’t run fast enough.

* * *

“So, tell me what I’m like.”

She’s running a hand through his hair, his head on her lap, both of them on a picnic towel, though they didn’t actually bring any food. Narcissa refuses to eat out of a towel on the floor and Harry doesn’t care enough to try to convince her.

Lying on it is nice enough, the grass is warm under him, if a bit lumpy here and there. There’s a cloud in the sky which looks like a ferret. Harry had pointed it out to Narcissa but she’d not found it nearly as funny. He supposes she had to be there.

Now he just stares at it until it starts morphing into something more weasel-like, the neck longer, and he finds that even funnier.

It’s a sunny day, rare as those are, and the warm late summer weather along with her mesmerizing fingers lull Harry into a dazed state where he doesn’t stop to filter his reply at her enthralling voice.

He snorts in amusement. “The snobbiest pureblood I’ve ever met. You always look like you’re smelling something bad.”

Narcissa makes an affronted sound and sends a stinging hex right to his bollocks.

Harry grunts out a strangled “Bloody hell,” and eyes her sullenly. “You don’t play fair, woman.”

Narcissa arches a very unimpressed eyebrow and stares him down until he falls back into her lap, all the while grumbling his bad luck in life.

When her fingers on his hair tug more than caress, Harry winces and says, “Alright, alright. I’m sorry. It’s true, though,” he adds under his breath.

She hears him, of course, so Harry has to suffer through another hex. This time he handles it well, he thinks. He’s a bit proud of himself for not grunting out in pain. Too much.

“Merlin, you Black women are always trying to kill me.”

Narcissa makes a reluctantly amused sound and then says, “Oh? Even Andromeda?”

“Once I almost dropped Teddy. I swear she looked like Bellatrix reincarnate.”

She had, too. Worse than the first time he saw her and reached for his wand thinking it was Bellatrix.

“She dies then? Bella?” Narcissa casually asks, though it doesn’t fool anyone. Her voice is tight and her fingers freeze on his head and all of her just goes kind of very still.

Harry curses his love-addled brain and her unfair beauty and her sneaky Slytherin tactics that always manage to make him say more than he wants.

He sits up slowly, turns towards her, and gives her a forlorn look.

“I’m sorry, Cissa. You know I didn’t mean to tell you anything else.”

Narcissa swallows hard and looks away.

There’s a few muggles on paddle boats by the lake and happy families laughing around picnics, and they all seem so very far away with their blissfully ignorant lives.

He follows her eyes and smiles at the sight of two little girls, probably sisters, the older one trying to teach the little one how to walk. She doesn’t look very into it, keeps falling back on her bum and crawling away.

“She’s my _sister_. She accepted me right away, even before Andy did, and she used to play with me and teach me all kinds of things. Perhaps they weren’t always proper things for a child to learn, but she always _cared_.”

Harry tears his eyes away from the children at the pain in her voice. He takes her hand, taps her wrist softly. She looks down at the sight and her eyes are swimming a bit. He pretends he doesn’t see it when she blinks the tears away, knows she hates showing that kind of emotion.

He lies back down on the blanket, one arm pillowing his head and the other still tapping away at her wrist.

“I know, Cissa. She still cared for you even when she went a bit… well, even after Azkaban,” he settles for, deciding it’s probably not best to mention just how deranged Bellatrix had been in the end.

Narcissa seems to know anyway and she falls down next to him with a carelessness that’s so very unlike her. Like her body is suddenly too heavy for her to care about holding herself proper. She’s always proper, makes a point of it, but now it’s like the grief overshadows that need.

“She lost her mind completely.” She says it like she’s sure, even though Harry has been very careful to not make any sort of comment about that. It’s like a heavy exhale, like she’s expelling a heavy burden from her body by putting it into words.

Harry sighs and nods reluctantly and knows she sees the movement from the corner of her eyes.

Narcissa brings her free hand to her stomach and starts playing with the fabric of her dress. It twists and turns around her fingers, over and over again.

“She’s always been a bit unstable. It’s part of the Black family’s legacy I suppose. Half of us are completely mad. I reckon I should be grateful I don’t share their genetics,” she says humorlessly.

Harry squeezes the hand he’s still holding, brings it up to his lips and presses a soft kiss to it. Narcissa turns a bit to look at him, her eyes so very haunted.

He thinks he knows, thinks she’s wondering what she could’ve done different, if there was anything to do at all. He’s not sure there is, he thinks that maybe Narcissa’s right and she’s always been a bit unstable. There’s the whole intermarrying thing and then the whole growing up with blood purist ideals drilled into them. It certainly didn’t help that she joined Voldemort while still in school. Harry knows the pull of Dark Magic, it’s twisted and alluring and it would corrupt anyone unstable enough to think they could control it.

So he doesn’t comment about that, thinks that perhaps some things are best unsaid.

He looks back up at the clouds, thinks that it’s definitely become a weasel now. He smiles bit.

“You’re beautiful,” he says, going back to her previous question.

He knows there’s nothing he can say to soothe her about Bellatrix’s death, and he doesn’t want to leave her thinking that the way he described her future self is all he thinks about her.

Narcissa turns her head towards him and Harry tears his eyes from the clouds and gets a bit lost in hers, almost the same color as the sky.

“You were one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, even if you looked at me like I was dirt beneath your shoes.”

He quirks his lips a bit and she lets out a long-suffering sigh.

“I imagine I would, at that. You’d be just a snotty child,” she haughtily says, and he feels lighter now that the sadness has left her eyes a bit.

Harry chuckles. “Yeah. And a scrawny one too, who did not get along with your son at all. You were not impressed.”

He brings her hand to his stomach, starts tapping the back of it this time, slowly. One-two-one-two-three. Repeat. She waits, knowing that he’s still working out how to put his thoughts into words.

He looks up again, tries to organize his thoughts, thinks that perhaps he’ll find some answers up there.

“You never joined the Death Eaters, even when they all ended up at your house like it was a bloody summer camp. You avoided any battle, your only concern was Draco and keeping him alive. You are as devoted a mother as anyone can have. I’ve always envied Draco that, actually,” he ruefully says. “I didn’t want you as a mother, mind, what with all the sneering and obvious dislike you showed me.” And isn’t he so very grateful for never having those kinds of feelings towards her older self now that he’s sleeping with her. “But your relationship was… I wanted that. It was nice to look at. And you saved me.” He turns his head back to hers, meets her blue eyes, curious, cautious. “I told you this already, but… You saved me when you didn’t have to, you risked your life lying for me. You lied to Voldemort’s bloody face, one of the best Legillimens alive. You’re exceptional.”

He shakes his head at the marvel that she is and smiles at her proudly. Now that he knows her, he sees her actions for him in the forest from a whole other perspective.

She smiles, indulgent, like she knows how exceptional she is but likes him admiring her anyways.

Harry smiles back and then bites his lip, considering. He looks at her and he sees a flash of her future self, and he knows that there had been something he’d been missing before. When he didn’t know her like this, didn’t have her younger self to compare her to.

“But you also…” He starts, pauses, creases his forehead in thought. Then he continues, slow, testing out the words. “I always thought that you looked kind of sad, even behind your perfectly collected mask. I used to mock Draco when he irritated me, saying that you looked like you regretted having him for a son.” She squeezes his hand and he gives her an apologetic smile. “It wasn’t nice. We weren’t very nice to each other, before.”

“No, I don’t imagine that any son of Lucius’ would be nice to you,” she says, sounding both amused and worried.

Harry snorts despite himself. “Right. Though he’s obviously yours too and I think you should’ve probably spanked him a few times to teach him some manners.”

He’s joking, but only partially. It’s something he’s wondered about lately, a time or two. Narcissa is wonderful and he knows that she does have some dislike for muggles, a lot of times based on pure prejudice, but she has a good heart and he can’t imagine that she would teach her son to be anything but kind.

He wonders sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly low, if him leaving her makes her into the woman he had always thought her to be. He wonders if she becomes resentful and angry and sour and if that’s the type of mother Draco had. He wonders if it’s all his fault.

He thinks about that a lot, actually. Thinks that maybe not _all of it is_ , but at least quite a bit.

Narcissa smacks him playfully and Harry remembers that he’s supposed to be teasing her and so he dutifully laughs and raises his hands in surrender.

“I’ll have you know I probably told him to make your life miserable if this is how you treat his mother.” She sniffs haughtily but he can see her fighting to control her smile.

“I’m sure I deserved it,” he diplomatically says.

He sighs and looks at her for a while, eyes fixed on hers while his brain is decades away.

“Do you think I did?” he asks, tentatively voicing his fears.

“Hmm?”

“Do you think this…” He waves a hand in the air and makes a vague gesture around them. “Everything. Do you think it happened already? In my time?”

She quirks an eyebrow at him, then turns to lie on her side, one arm bent and supporting her head.

He stares at her, darts his eyes over her body. She doesn’t usually allow herself to be like this in public, so open, so free. He likes it, thinks it suits her.

“Are you suggesting I somehow act like you’re an insufferable brat in the future because I already know how much of one you are now?” she asks him, voice filled with amusement.

Harry can’t bring himself to laugh at her teasing, even though he knows she’s trying to ease his mind.

He turns his head back up again and brings his hands to rest over his heart, lacing his fingers together.

“What if you hate me? What if…” He swallows hard but the lump on his throat is impossible to get rid off. “I’m going to leave you, Cissa. What if you spend years resenting me and…”

Narcissa leans over him and kisses him in a way that leaves him absolutely breathless and incapable of continuing with his spiraling thoughts, which he thinks is exactly her intention. She’s sneaky like that.

She pulls back, hovers over him, and tilts her head a bit. Her hair falls down her face and around his, loose curls this time.

“I can’t know for certain how I’ll be in the future,” she says, soundly actually quite sure, contrary to her words, “But I don’t think it would be that, Harry. I can’t say that it wouldn’t make it… easier to keep you away until you go back and remember me, but I’m sure I don’t resent you.”

Harry sighs and he wants to believe her, but there’s the little niggling voice in his head — this one all his own — that tells him to remember the way she had always looked at him, for years. Even as recently as until he’d come back.

Harry and Draco have been friends for years now, they started talking about a year after the war, reluctantly at first and then tentatively, because they often worked together on cases. But they’re friends now, proper friends who go to each other’s house all the time and know each other’s quirks. Draco’s been dating Hermione for almost five years, for Merlin’s sake.

And Narcissa Malfoy doesn’t give Harry more than a cursory look and a curt greeting. _Still_.

So he really doesn’t know how Narcissa Black can make such promises.

“You can’t—“

“Of course I can,” she cuts him off, looking down on him, unwavering. Her arms must be killing her, he absently thinks, but she’s so stubborn she won’t succumb to it. “I’m not the sort of woman who loves lightly, Harry, and I love you with all my heart. A few years of waiting will not dwindle that.”

Harry puts his arms around her and casually flips her until she’s sitting on him instead of hovering over him. She lets out a little squeak of surprise and gives him an unimpressed look.

He ignores her, because she is very clearly more comfortable now. He sighs and shakes his head despondently. “ _Decades_ , Cissa.”

She shrugs, uncaring. “Even that. The only thing I would resent you for is if you waste our time together with inconsequential things instead of enjoying every last minute we have.”

Her words hit him a bit unexpectedly. Not just the weight of them but also her tone, and he stops for the first time in days and thinks that, with trying to protect her so badly, he’s clearly hurting her. And that’s the last thing he wants to do.

Harry looks at her apologetically but she greets him with nothing but love and adoration and absolute resoluteness.

Chastising himself, Harry masters a smile on his lips which only grows at her look of approval.

“Better,” she says. “Now, I recall I was promised some ice cream.”

Harry laughs and kisses her passionately because there’s no other possible reaction he can give her.

* * *

Andromeda is the only one to know about them. They expertly navigate a relationship in the shadows for months and months, both aware that they can’t be seen out as a serious couple because Narcissa is supposed to marry Lucius Malfoy in a few years.

Harry doesn’t know when that particularly dreadful event is supposed to take place, but he knows that Draco is born the June before his own birthday, so it stands to reason that they have to be married by September of 1979 at the latest.

Narcissa’s face every time that comes up is precious.

“I cannot believe I have to actually sleep with _Lucius Malfoy_ ,” she says, her lips curling in her most expert sneer. “The man is vapid, arrogant, and he can’t even be bothered to look away from his own reflection to pay anyone any mind.”

Harry feels his stomach sour at the very thought. He imagines his face when he has to think about it is probably also quite something.

“I know. Don’t even remind me.”

“I suppose I should be waiting for his courtship offer any time now,” she adds derisively. “Mother and father will surely be delighted.”

Harry grinds his jaw at the mere thought.

It’s December of 1976 and Harry can pretty much feel the clock ticking on them. Tick-tock tick-tock, louder and louder, their future getting closer more and more ominously.

“Fuck that shit,” Harry says, suddenly very willing to say to hell with the whole world and let them all become muggles.

Anything ought to be better than knowing the woman he loves is supposed to be Malfoy’s wife.

The fact that they clearly have to shag — at least once if Draco’s conception is any indication — makes his blood boil and his stomach curl.

He determinately resolves to burry that thought as deep as it will go.

“I don’t want to think about it anymore,” he says, getting up on his feet lighting-fast and meeting Narcissa’s quizzical eyebrow head-on. “You’re _my_ girlfriend now, and I’m going to enjoy loving you for as long as I can.”

The smirk which graces Narcissa’s full lips is entirely predatory.

* * *

A month later Narcissa visits him at home quite unexpectedly.

Harry greets her with a grin, but it soon falls at the sight of her wild eyes and pale face.

“What’s wrong, Cissa?”

Narcissa wrings her hands in front of her and her mouth opens and closes for a while, utterly unlike her usual eloquent self, and Harry’s worry only grows.

“Cissa? What happened? Are you alright?”

“I…”

When she doesn’t continue, Harry takes matters into his own hands and does a full body scan just to assuage his mind.

It was something he used to do automatically to Ron and Hermione when he’d go into a panic right after the war and needed to know they were fine. Hermione would always say that it wasn’t healthy, but then she had also taught him the spell so Harry doesn’t think she minded that much. Ron just let him do it because he understood it was what Harry needed.

It’s been ages since he felt that need, that rush of blood through his ears and the worry starting to grow and grow in the pit of his stomach. But the movements come automatically, his hand casting the spell in precise movements, the magic flowing through him and through her and then back again.

When he gets all readings perfect, including two very strong heartbeats, Harry’s knees nearly buckle.

Narcissa’s hands fall to the side like a heavy weight. He looks at her and she tells him, as if coming out of a stupor, “I’m pregnant.”

Holy…

“Merlin’s beard.”

Narcissa’s face mirrors his own feelings. Shock and a very prolonged _what the actually buggering fuck_.

They’d used all the spells. Every single time. How is this even…

He opens and closes his mouth for a long while, probably looking like a dead fish, before he manages to gets some words out.

“But you only have Draco.”

By the look on her face, Harry is quite positive that was the entirely wrong thing to say.

Narcissa’s eyes flash dangerously and her face loses all the uncertainty in a second. Her hand touches her belly protectively and she advances toward him, all of her radiating fury. Harry almost instinctively takes step back but then stops the move before it begins. She can be scary as hell, sure, but Harry would never be scared of her.

She stops just a few feet before him, her eyes narrowed into fierce slits. “If you think for one second that I will _abort_ this baby, you don’t know me at all. She’s my daughter and I don’t care what future you come from but I’m keeping her.”

That’s all Harry needs to snap out of his shock and rush towards her. He cradles her face in his hands, relieved beyond measure that she doesn’t flinch or pull back.

He shakes his head vehemently. “Never, Narcissa. I would never want that. This is our baby…” He pauses, blinks. “Did you say daughter? You already know it’s a girl?”

Narcissa’s face softens immediately and there’s a small, hesitant smile on her lips. She nods. “I did the spell. We’re having a girl.”

Harry looks at her for a long second, quite at a loss for what to say.

He’d never… Merlin, he’d never dared to hope that he’d ever get this chance with her, or with anyone, since he now knows that she’s the one for him.

But now… Now he has this chance and he can’t even begin to make sense of the warm feeling spreading through his chest, growing and growing and nearly overtaking him whole.

“A girl, Narcissa. Our own baby girl?”

She nods, tears swimming in her eyes, and Harry’s smile grows so big, so wondrous, that he thinks it’ll get stuck like that forever.

He kisses her fiercely and then wraps her in a tight hug for a long moment. When she takes his hand and puts it in her still-flat stomach, Harry melts.

“A girl. I can’t even believe it.”

“It’s true.”

“She’s going to be so beautiful, Narcissa, I just know it. She’s going to look just like you.”

Narcissa chuckles wetly. “Not with that mop of Potter hair that comes with your magic.”

Harry shakes his head in mock misery. “Dear Merlin, I don’t wish this hair on anyone.”

Narcissa’s laughter is light and bubbly and she runs a hand through his hair fondly. “I like it. She’ll be perfect.”

The way she’s looking at him, so full of promises, makes him lose himself in a lengthy kiss.

Later, when they’re lying in each other’s arms in bed, breathing still a bit erratic, Narcissa asks, “Do you think… She’ll be alright, won’t she? You don’t think something happens to her, do you?”

Harry hears the fear and worry which she’s not able to conceal even though her fingers keep curling around his chest hair just as leisurely as before.

He holds her closer and tries to find strength in her presence.

“I… I hope not, Cissa. I can’t even imagine if something does happen.”

And he can’t. He can’t even bring himself to consider that. It makes him panic in a way that he never has before, not when he was fearing for his friends’ lives or even for his. This is different. The idea that something happens to their baby fills him with an almost paralyzing dread.

Harry takes a breath, forces the thought out of his head. He runs his fingers through her hair and it helps him calm down. It’s soothing; soft and wavy today.

Narcissa’s hand on his chest pauses, her fingers a few centimeters above it. She’s gone still and he can almost feel her heartbeat on his own ribs where she’s touching him.

“But you said I only have Draco,” she says, careful, like she’s forcing the words out one by one.

Harry weights the answer in his head for a while, and when he does speak its slow and hesitant. “Yes. That I know of. It… maybe you’ve got her hidden away?”

It’s a possibility, even if it doesn’t sound like a very valid one at this point. He can’t imagine that she’d have had a child all this time and no one would’ve heard about it.

But it’s one option that doesn’t make him think about anything happening to their daughter and so he clings to it with ferocious hope.

Narcissa is quiet for a long time. Her fingers resume their ministrations, curling his chest hair against her fingers over and over again.

“I don’t think I would,” she eventually says, and it makes a crack in his shaky hope.

Harry doesn’t really know what to say after that, so he makes a promise to his unborn daughter and to his girlfriend to protect them to his last breath.


	6. Chapter 6

They’re sitting on the grass in the garden, a canopy above their heads to shield them from the drizzling rain.

The grass is still a bit wet, even with the drying charms Narcissa placed on them, and her nose is still curled in disgust at having to do something so plebeian.

Harry is trying hard not to laugh because he’s quite fond of all his body parts and his girlfriend is currently running on pregnant hormones which make her even more dangerous. But it’s still objectively a funny sight.

Narcissa had told him that she wanted to learn wandless magic, wanted to be able to defend herself and their baby no matter what, and Harry readily agreed even if the thought of her needing to actually use those skills to that end makes him wants to hurt someone.

So now they’re sitting on wet grass and Narcissa’s belly is big and round and he always smiles when he looks at it.

Narcissa has a little crease on her forehead from concentrating, and it’s only the way her teeth grind and her jaw tenses that tells him she’s struggling and trying to control her frustration.

She’s like that a lot. She likes to keep her emotions under control at all times, even her happiness. It’s why he takes so much joy when she just lets herself smile widely and laugh heartily around him. It makes him warm, makes him feel special.

Usually, she’ll be just like this. Determined to power through, to not show any weakness. And so he does it for her because he knows she’ll never say a thing otherwise.

“I struggled quite a bit at first,” he tells her conversationally. Her eyes narrow a bit, like she sees what he’s doing, but she lets him. “I had to learn how to _feel_. It’s something we forget how to do because we’ve always been taught we need our wand to do magic, but magic is all around us. You can feel it, you just have to train yourself a bit first.”

Narcissa’s jaw works from side to side and she closes her eyes. Her legs are crossed underneath her and her back is perfectly straight, both hands resting on her knees. Her right thumb rubs her first two fingers in an infinite circle.

Harry lies back down on his elbows, looking at her. He picks at a few blades of grass, they’re wet and cool but he likes the smell of freshly cut grass. The ones he brings to his nose don’t smell like that exactly, but it’s close enough.

He lets his hand fall back to the grass, sends a ripple of magic over to Narcissa. Sees the wave go and go and go, the tips of the grass waving back and forth, watches as it reaches her.

She sucks in a breath, and he smiles.

“Feel that?”

She nods, swallows. “That was you?”

“Yeah,” he breathes out, because it’s unbelievably intimate. They’ve had sex, of course, the proof is right in front of them, but nothing feels quite as intimate as feeling another person’s magic.

“Your… It’s, hmm. It feels warm. Caring.” She pauses, tilts her head, and Harry sends another ripple. She laughs, surprised. “It’s _you_.”

“Huh?”

She doesn’t open her eyes but turns her head to face him like she knows exactly where his eyes are and she smiles.

Harry can’t ever get enough of that smile.

“Your magic. It’s just like you,” she says. “Playful, warm, like an embrace, almost. Loving.”

Harry flushes, is glad that she has her eyes closed and can’t see it. His heart stutters a bit and he lies down on the grass fully, both arms wrapped underneath his head.

There’s the constant _tap tap tap_ of the raindrops on the canopy and the softer sounds when it hits the earth outside. There’s the curtain of water falling down the side of the canopy and it feels like he's looking at the world through a portal.

When he stays like this, just _quiet_ , observing, he wonders how it took him so long to be able to feel magic.

It’s _everywhere_.

“Does it feel like that to everyone?” Narcissa asks. He turns to her, finds her eyes open and looking at him questioningly.

Her fingers aren’t rubbing each other anymore. Her right hand is behind her for support on the ground, the left one is hovering over the blades of grass. Her fingers move in waves and he wonders what she feels, if anything.

He shrugs a bit. “Hermione, Draco, and Luna were learning it with me. Luna is the only one who can do it so far. She says… She did describe it kind of like you did, yes.”

He stretches one arm out, reaches for her. She’s too far to touch, but that hadn’t been the point. He does it again, another ripple of his magic, and she closes her eyes for a moment like it feels good.

Harry stares at her in wonder. He can’t imagine that someone would ever have that reaction to _him_.

“Luna’s magic feels like nargles and wrakspurts,” he says, suddenly feeling the need to say _something_. “Utterly fantastical.”

Narcissa chuckles. “And mine?”

“Like the sun and the stars. Like something I couldn’t hope to be worthy of touching yet, somehow, you let me.” It’s true, as well. He’s always a bit in wonder when he feels her perform even the smallest spells.

Narcissa stares her him, mouth agape, like somehow _he_ ’s the wonder.

It’s silly, of course, so he closes his eyes.

“Try it,” he says, desperately wanting to feel it now.

He hears her shuffle, possibly trying to rearrange herself. “I… how?”

“Just… Do you feel it? The magic around you?”

She doesn’t answer so he thinks maybe not yet. She’s brilliant but so is Hermione and it took her long to manage even that. Too rational, he thinks, just like Draco.

He blindly pats the grass next to him. “Come lie down.” When he feels her next to him, he takes her hand and laces their fingers. “Close your eyes. Just… try to feel what I tell you, yeah? Just feel.”

He sends her a little spark, running right down his arm through to their joined hands. She jerks a bit then lets out a peal of embarrassed laughter. “Feel that, yeah? Now try to find that feeling around you. Can you feel the rain? It’s soft, there’s little waves of it, like they’re almost shy or something.”

He lets her be for a while, and he thinks that maybe she doesn’t feel it at all. Then she taps the back of his hand with a finger. Hesitantly at first, then more confident. It’s a soft tap, a rhythmic hum, like waves at the sea, and he smiles. She can feel it.

“Put your other hand on the grass,” he whispers, afraid of being too loud. He still has his eyes closed but he has to assume she does it. “It’s warm. It’s like those days when it’s just too hot and the heat comes off it? It’s wet today, I know, but it’s the same feeling.”

He turns his head to the side and opens his eyes. She’s got a little furrow on her brow. Adorable, he thinks. Then she tilts her head and the furrow grows deeper.

She lets go of his hand, places it firmly on the ground, digs her fingers in. Harry’s never seen her like this, one with Nature almost. He’s always thought she’d avoid getting dirty like the plague. And she does, usually, but she clearly can also put it to the side when she wants to learn something.

It makes him smile.

Her frown grows quizzical then, her head turns to the other side. She hums, removes her fingers, then digs them in again. Her fingernails are dirty, the red nail polish speckled with brown. He’s never seen them look anything other than immaculate.

Then she lets out a surprised little, “Oh.”

She turns to look at him, almost like she’s looking for his approval, and the smile that forms in his lips is so big it almost hurts.

“You did it, Cissa. You felt the magic.”

She grins, so so bright, then lets out a little breath of laughter, like she’s surprised.

She closes her eyes again, a determined look on her face, and she says, “What else?”

And Harry knows that he’ll never love someone as much as he loves Narcissa Black.

* * *

Narcissa hides her pregnancy expertly. She’s gifted with Charms and even Harry, who knows her belly has swollen accordingly, can’t tell that anything is different when she cloaks herself in her spells.

She eats more, of course, and has the strangest cravings, but she’s sworn the house-elves to secrecy. Her parents are none the wiser, and not even Andromeda knows. Harry suggested she tell her quite a few times but then Narcissa told him that, unless he’d suddenly changed his mind about telling more people that he came from the future, she was not going to try to explain why she didn’t just marry him like she wanted to.

Harry didn’t really have much to argue after that, and wisely kept silent on the subject.

He did ask her about the part where she wanted to marry him, and Narcissa merely gave him a pitying look.

“Of course I want to marry you,” she’d said. The ‘you idiot’ was not at all left out of her tone, even if it was from her words.

Because Harry couldn’t stomach the thought of doing what he really wanted — to marry her and never let her go — only to have her fall into Lucius’ arms anyway, he wisely kept quiet about that as well.

Allie, one of the five people to know about the baby, is unbelievably excited. She’s taken to knitting a mountain of blankets, socks which are so small and cute that Harry can’t help but coo, much to Narcissa’s amusement, little beanies and onesies and all sorts of other things. There are sock monkeys as well, after Harry jokingly told her it’s a thing muggles do, and Harry couldn’t even believe his eyes when he saw a whole row of them happily staring at him from the nursery.

And there’s a nursery. Harry can hardly stop the excitement fluttering away in his heart every time he passes by it.

There is the obvious problem, though. Since no one knows Narcissa is pregnant — or that she’s even in a relationship with Harry besides Andromeda — there’s the small matter of what the hell to do when the baby comes.

The obvious solution, of course, is for the baby to live with Harry, but that means that Narcissa won’t be able to see her as often as she should and that leaves a very uneasy feeling in his chest.

Narcissa is going to be a wonderful mother and their daughter deserves to spend as much time with her as she can. And Narcissa doesn’t deserve stolen hours and lonely nights.

For now, before the baby comes, Harry’s trying not to worry about it too much. But he knows he can’t put it off forever.

She’s due any day now, her belly so big that Harry often stares at her in wonder at how she can even still walk.

That usually earns him a well-placed hex, so Harry’s trying to kick himself off the habit.

“I’ve convinced mother and father that they should spend the winter at our house in Milan,” Narcissa calmly says while they’re having a post-dinner snack.

Well, snack in Harry’s case, Narcissa has basically commandeered herself enough food to be considered a whole second dinner. She’s sprawled leisurely across the sofa, her feet on Harry’s lap, and she moves it this way and that according to where she wants it rubbed. Harry obeys like the well-trained boyfriend he is, and she happily munches on a whole plate of pickle and marmite mini sandwiches, balanced precariously on her belly.

He smartly doesn’t comment on that. He does raise his eyes in pleasant surprise at her comment.

“Really? That’s great. You can move in while they’re gone.”

Narcissa smirks smugly then pokes his stomach with her toes. “That was the plan, dear. I know I won’t be able to keep them away forever, but… at least for the first few months I’ll be able to stay with her,” she says, one hand going to her stomach. She smiles and rubs it a bit and says, “She’s kicking tonight. And her feet are right under my ribs. I think it’ll be time soon.”

Harry can’t wait, and by the look on her face, neither can Narcissa.

He wants to lean over and kiss her but she’s gone back to eating happily and he knows where her priorities lie these days, so he settles for massaging her feet with renewed vigor and giving her a goofy smile.

“You’re gonna be amazing, Cissa. I can’t wait to meet her.”

“Neither can I,” she replies with a soft smile.

* * *

Their daughter is born on the 21st of August, 1977. Harry watches in fascination as Narcissa goes into labor, how she pushes through, barely complains about the pain until it’s proper time to push. He looks at her half in wonder and then immediately comes to the conclusion that he’s very glad he can’t get pregnant because he’s absolutely positive he couldn’t deal with the pain, and certainly not with the almost aloofness that she does.

Allie runs back and forth around the house, commandeering the two house-elves from Narcissa’s house to help with whatever she decides needs done at that moment. Harry is relegated to handholding duty and encouraging words and he takes his tasks very seriously.

Narcissa hexes him. Once. A simple stinging hex aimed just at his groin and accompanied by a single glare that clearly says “This is all your fault,” even though her lips are busy with breathing through the pain.

Harry doesn’t even have it in him to disagree because he can’t fault her logic. He’s also just a little shocked that the first bit of wandless magic she performed was a hex directed at him. And also reluctantly impressed.

When their baby girl finally makes her appearance, it’s half past three in the morning and they’re all incredibly exhausted. Still, somehow, it’s like she brings energy to the whole room with her presence and they all perk up. Allie looks immensely proud of herself and happily pats Tibby and Elly on the head for a job well done.

Harry holds his daughter for the first time and his world kind of stops and focuses on her.

She’s squishy and pink and bloated but she’s the most beautiful baby he’s ever seen. Her eyes blink up at him blindly and she only cries once, loud and firm, but then quiets down. As if she was only affirming her presence to the world.

Harry passes her to Narcissa in a daze, placing the baby on her arms. Narcissa’s smile is wondrous and Harry doesn’t think she’s ever looked as beautiful, messy hair and sweaty brow and all. She looks like she was meant just for this.

Allie busies herself with dealing with the rest of the birthing process much quicker than Harry thought it would take, and he’s quite sure there must be a lot of house-elf magic involved. Which is certainly nice, he just wants Narcissa to be comfortable.

He caresses Narcissa’s hair and kisses her lips, then runs a gentle finger though their daughter’s hair. She doesn’t have much of it, but they were quite right that it would be his hair indeed. It’s dark and tufty and he spares a moment to sincerely hope that she has more luck with it than he does.

Maybe if it’s longer it won’t be such a mess? He’s never tried it but it bears thinking on.

Her eyes are still newborn blue and half-blind and she noses her way onto Narcissa’s chest, who indulgently helps her to her breast. Narcissa winces, once, then smooths her features in a way that lets him know it still hurts but she’s determined not to show it. Harry is a bit baffled, he had no idea breastfeeding hurt.

He’s actually got no clue about a lot of baby stuff, which has become more and more clear as the pregnancy progresses, but he’s always been kind of a hands-on learner and he has Narcissa and Allie by his side so he doesn’t think it’ll be too bad.

“What are we naming her?” he asks softly, unwilling to disturb the moment.

They had decided that they would wait for the moment they saw her, to see which name fit. “It’s the way things are done,” Narcissa had said, which meant that it was one of those traditions he hadn’t known about before but she wanted him to follow.

He was alright with it, and he thinks that it’s a good thing, too. What if they’d wanted to name her something like Ermentrude and she was totally a Clara?

He must confess that looking at her he still has no idea what she looks like, but Narcissa’s smart like that, she’ll come up with something perfect.

Narcissa smiles and looks down at their baby, runs a tired hand over her little brow. The baby opens her eyes and looks at her mother like she’s everything, and Harry knows that their daughter is smart too.

“Adhara,” Narcissa says, her voice soft.

Harry looks at her. He likes the sound of it, almost like a whisper, a promise, like warm wind blowing through his heart.

“Does it have to do with the stars?” he asks, because she said they had to follow that tradition too.

Narcissa’s smile is soft to go with her voice, and she says, “It’s the second brightest star of Canis Major. After Sirius. It used to be the first, long ago.”

And Harry’s heart grows and grows and grows and he looks at their little girl, Adhara, and he thinks that that’s the most perfect name for her. She’ll have Sirius looking out for her, he knows it.

He feels a rush of warmth and love for this woman who knows him so well and who gave him such a perfect daughter, and his cheek is a little wet when he cradles a hand on her face and kisses her gently.

“Thank you,” he says, because it means everything to him. “It’s perfect.” He kisses Adhara next and can’t help but repeat himself. “She’s perfect.”

* * *

Adhara grows too fast for Harry’s liking.

The first few months go by in a blur of midnight wake up calls and more diaper changes than he thought were possible for such a tiny human. Harry can’t thank his magic enough for making the process much easier than he’s certain muggles go through, but it’s still not a walk in the park.

But Adhara is absolutely precious and such a happy baby, and he would have it no other way.

As he knew she would, Narcissa falls into motherhood like she was born for it. She’s got a preternatural instinct about what their daughter needs and how to comfort her and Harry spends a lot of time just looking at both of them together.

Adhara doesn’t have the Black eyes, much to their surprise.

Narcissa had taken a took at her eyes one day, settling into a familiar emerald green, and blinked.

“She has your eyes,” she’d said. A curious mix between surprise and accusation.

Harry had bitten his lip to contain his laughter. Narcissa had held Adhara up, the sunshine in the garden bathing her face softly, and her eyes did indeed sparkle into that vibrant green that he was so used to seeing on himself and no-one else.

It wasn’t a normal green, everybody had always agreed. It was his mother’s green eyes and then his and now his daughter’s.

Narcissa had smiled, bewildered. “Your family magic,” she had said. “Your mother may have come from a long lost squib line.” She'd shrugged. “Or not. Maybe it was her own personal touch of magic. Now it’s part of your family magic and our grandchildren will carry it with them.”

She'd seemed pleased at the idea at least, and Harry had told her that Draco carried the grey Black eyes which made her smile at him fondly and tell him he was silly, but she did look even more pleased after that so Harry knew she had cared, deep down, about the possibility that maybe she wasn’t a proper enough Black to carry on the family magic.

Which was the silliest thing, really, because he’s never known a more proper Black than his Narcissa.

However, much to his surprise and immense joy, minus the hair and eyes, Adhara looks exactly like a mini Narcissa.

It’s a bit uncanny, at times, the way such a small person can get away with pulling the same expressions as her mother.

Harry often has visions of his future where he’s overruled by Black women and their raised eyebrows. It gives him shivers.

For the first month of Adhara’s life, Narcissa had told her parents that she had decided to travel to the continent for the rest of the summer. They had apparently agreed that she needed to get her youthful days out of her system before she married. She had come home fuming but Harry had calmed her down saying that it would still be a while.

But now it’s April of 1978, and her parents have come back from Milan which means that Narcissa has to go back home.

Has to leave their home, the one they built with laughter and love, and go back to her parents’ house in London.

Harry knows that it was coming, knows that they managed it before, that Narcissa would spend whole days with him without a care, but it’s just not the same now.

They have a little girl who adores her mother and Harry can’t stomach the thought that Adhara might raise her little head when she wants to show her mum something, look for her with those big green eyes and a bright smile and not find her.

Harry doesn’t ever want that to happen.

But because he often doesn’t get what he wants, and what he gets often feels like it’s only on a short loan, Harry spends his first night at home with Adhara without his girlfriend — and it _sucks_.

She goes to sleep fine because she’s used to him putting her to bed by himself, and he reads her the story about the dragon and the three little crups and Adhara giggles when he roars like the dragon and holds on to her feet in happiness and then falls asleep just like that.

But then she wakes up in the middle of the night, something she hasn’t done in weeks, and it’s like she just _knows_ that Narcissa isn’t there. She cries and cries and cries and Harry starts feeling like an utter failure for not being able to calm her. When Allie comes to see what all the fuss is about, Harry almost starts crying right then.

Allie takes the baby in her small arms, which don’t look nearly strong enough but she manages just fine, and Adhara keeps crying, her face red and puffy, and then she’s proper hiccuping like her suffering is just so big that it comes all out in gasps.

It breaks Harry’s heart and he tugs on his hair, desperate, until he just can’t take it anymore.

He sends his Patronus to Narcissa, Prongs’ imposing form seeming a bit downcast at the sight of Adhara’s suffering, and Harry watches him leave in a bit of a daze.

Narcissa Apparates in the next minute, looking like she hadn’t got any sleep at all.

So, not much different than the rest of them.

She meets Harry’s eyes and the look on his face is enough for her to just… crumble. Like all her energy goes out with a sigh and she whispers, “Oh, love,” like it pains her to see him like that and then gently lifts Adhara up from Allie’s arms.

“It’s okay, little star, it’s okay,” she whispers, over and over again. Adhara holds on to her tightly, her little fist curling around a whole chunk of Narcissa’s hair in a way that must certainly hurt but Narcissa doesn’t say or do anything about it.

She keeps bouncing their daughter until she starts slowly, so slowly, calming down. She hums to her, softly, a melody Harry had never heard before until Adhara was born. Adhara’s little eyes start drooping slowly, like she’s still fighting at first, like she’s afraid that Narcissa will leave.

Harry runs a hand through his face and just leans back against the wall and feels like a total failure.

It hurts his heart seeing it, knowing that this will probably happen more often, knowing that he isn’t enough to comfort their baby. It pulls at his deepest insecurities and he can’t help but see himself in Adhara, crying for a parent who isn’t there. It’s different, of course, Narcissa is only ever gone for a few hours, but Harry can’t help the feeling.

Narcissa puts Adhara on the crib gently, runs a soft hand over her dark hair. It’s longer now, starting to curl around her neck, and Harry thinks that maybe it won’t be such a disaster as his is.

Then Narcissa comes to join him on the wall, tugs on his hand until he slides down against it, sits next to him on the floor with her back against the wall and her legs stretched out in front of her.

She takes his hand, kisses the back of it, says, “It’s not your fault,” and Harry doesn’t believe her because it feels like it is. “It’s not,” she insists, like she can read his thoughts. She probably can, he thinks absently, she’s talented like that. “Change is hard for babies, Harry, she’s just having a hard time at it.”

“I couldn’t make her stop crying, Cissa,” he says, and it’s a bit hoarse and a lot broken. “I’m her dad and I couldn’t calm her.”

Narcissa pulls his hand until it rests on her lap and squeezes tight. “You’re an amazing dad. If it had been the other way around she’d probably do the same and then I’d be the one with wild hair from running one too many desperate hands through it.”

Harry snorts despite himself. “Your hair is always perfect.”

“Of course it is,” she says, smug in every way, and that does make him smile a bit, reluctantly.

He sighs. “This is… not how I wanted it to go,” he says.

Narcissa hums and leans her head on his shoulder. “No. It most certainly is not. But we’ll get through it.”

Harry kisses her hair, grateful for her presence, her positivity, just for _her_. “Will you stay?” he asks, a bit too pleadingly.

Narcissa lifts the hand that’s not holding his up, touches his face softly, just the fingertips. They rub a bit on his stubble and he thinks she’ll complain like she always does — she doesn’t like facial hair, she says — but she doesn’t.

Her thumb smooths a path under his eye, then down his nose, then over his lips. She settles for resting her whole hand on his cheek, her thumb rubbing small circles around it.

Harry turns a bit and kisses her wrist. She sighs.

“I will,” she says. Then, with growing conviction. “I’m going to set a ward on my room. I want… I want something that’ll let me sleep here and alert me in case anyone tries to get in. Mother and father always send one of the elves, but Bella sometimes stops by.”

Harry feels a little bit of hope blossom in his chest and he smiles at her. “Yeah?”

She nods, kisses him. “Yes. We’ll make it work, Harry. I promise.”

And Harry believes her because Narcissa doesn’t make empty promises.

* * *

Harry comes home from work one day expecting to find Adhara running around the house with Allie chasing her indulgently, maybe half-naked as she’s wont to do with this heat. It usually makes him smile and all thoughts of work slide right off his head.

Instead, when he steps out of the floo, dusting himself off in the process because it’s simply ridiculous how he still can’t manage it without getting ash all over, he’s greeted by an unexpected sound.

Piano music drifts from the parlor, the melody soft and light and starry — and he knows now that there’s a charm for that, had seen Narcissa weave it into the song when she was composing it. It’s Adhara’s song, Narcissa wrote it especially for her just months after she was born.

It’s beautiful and he smiles brightly when he walks into the parlor, following the sound.

Adhara is dancing contentedly in the middle of the room, swaying on little wobbly feet, a dreamy smile on her face. She’s half-naked, of course, with only her diaper on, and her little hands move from side to side in jerky movements that don’t match the melody at all but she’s certainly very into it.

Determined little bugger that she is, she’s managed to rope Allie into dancing with her. Harry watches with a smile as she spins in dainty circles, her dress flowing in waves. It’s yellow today, just like the sunshine outside, and he wonders if there’s a charm there too.

Harry walks over, presses a kiss to Adhara’s hair, receives a distracted squeal in return, spins Allie once, and both her and Adhara let out an identical peal of laughter.

Narcissa sits by the piano, looking indulgently at the scene before her. Her eyes turn to Harry when she sees him and they go all soft and warm and he melts like he always does. She smiles at him when he reaches her, lifts her head up for a kiss but never stops playing.

Harry sits down next to her and Narcissa huffs playfully before agreeing to scoot over a bit so his arse is not half hanging. He bumps her shoulder gratefully, and she rolls her eyes a bit but her lips are still smiling.

They stay like that for a long time, Narcissa going through various songs, Adhara and Allie never stop dancing.

Eventually, Narcissa chooses a new song, slower, soothing, and she says, “Mother and father have agreed to Lucius’ courting request.”

And Harry freezes.

Narcissa keeps playing, her fingers delicate but purposeful, and Harry can feel the magic coming off of it, can feel the different notes in the air, the way they interact and combine and form a continuous melody. _She’s doing this_ , he realizes. Narcissa is working the magic in the music for a purpose, directing it towards a specific goal.

He spares half a moment to wonder at her talent, at her affinity for wandless magic, so much greater than his in a lot of things. Harry could never do this. He can feel it, can see it even, the color of the magic in the air, dark blue and silver, but he can’t do what she does.

For the rest of the time, he simply allows himself to be soothed as she intended, to let go of the tendrils of anger he was starting to feel.

It wasn’t at her, it’s never been at her, but at their situation. He doesn’t want it to happen, doesn’t want her in Lucius’ grasp for one moment, and it’s not even all about jealousy. A lot of it is, he won’t lie to himself about it, but it’s not all there is. Probably not even the biggest part.

It’s just that Narcissa deserves the world and Harry wants her to have it. He doesn’t want her to be trapped in a relationship for almost twenty years with someone she doesn’t want to be with.

It’s foolish, of course. He knows it has to happen because it’s already happened and he’s had years to accept it but he still hasn’t. Doesn’t think he ever properly will.

So he lets the music envelop him.

The song changes, so smoothly he almost wouldn’t have noticed it except for the feel of the magic which is slightly different. Reassuring. A promise. He puts an arm around her waist and she leans into it, her body relaxes and he notices now how tense she was.

“I love you,” he whispers, and she closes her eyes and keeps playing, a tear falling down her cheek.

Harry pauses, blinks through the shock.

He has never seen her cry before.

He holds her tighter, presses his body right next to hers, doesn’t know what to say at all. He’s never seen her like this, so obviously in pain, _letting_ him see it.

Narcissa plays and plays and plays and there are tears flowing freely down her closed eyes and Harry doesn’t know what to do besides hold her and tell her he loves her, over and over and over.

Harry feels the change, so subtle at first that he almost doesn’t notice it because it’s a feeling that’s underlying all the others she’d been playing for him. But this time it’s strong and loud and the only one, and it’s just _love_.

The music flows out in waves from the piano into the room and they are white swirled with red and so, _so_ bright.

Adhara gasps and Harry turns to her and sees her looking around in wonder before she opens her arms as if to welcome the waves, the embrace, like she can _feel_ it, and then she says, “Mama!” and Harry knows that she _can_.

Narcissa breathes out a little “Oh,” opens her eyes. They’re too filled with sorrow but also brimming with love and Harry gets up and picks Adhara up by her armpits, twirling her in the air once.

She laughs, delighted, and Harry says, “Do you like mummy’s music, Addie?”

She nods, opens her little arms again widely then brings them around her chest like she’s hugging herself. He smiles, kisses her cheek, and goes back to Narcissa with Adhara on his hip. He puts her in his lap and she cuddles into him with a little contented sigh. He curls one arm around her and the other around Narcissa and she keeps playing like that for what feels like hours.


	7. Chapter 7

Harry is not a fan of his girlfriend being courted by another man. At all. His only consolation prize — and it’s so small it almost doesn’t qualify as such — is that purebloods are just so bloody _proper_ that both of them have to be chaperoned everywhere. It’s not much, but it does make him feel a bit better to know that Lucius isn’t trying to get his slimy paws on Narcissa. Yet. It’s a bit petty, but there it is.

Narcissa is not impressed either. On the days she has to go out on a date with him she comes home in a sour mood, locks herself in the study, spends a good half hour destroying things, and then emerges and acts as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening in her life.

Harry is a little bit terrified at her ability to compartmentalize. And also quite impressed — but mostly terrified.

Harry runs into Andromeda once in Diagon Alley. Narcissa told her they had broken it off because of the courtship so Andromeda gives him a pitying look and proceeds to buy him more ice cream than he could probably stomach and generally just acts very concerned about him. Harry doesn’t have the stomach to tell her that it’s all a lie and he eats all his ice cream because he’s actually quite sad about the whole thing and it makes him feel surprisingly better.

Harry had resolutely avoided any more pureblood balls on the off chance that he’d be ambushed by Voldemort again. Narcissa had heard through her contacts that he was interested in Harry, wanted to recruit him. There had been many an unpleasant encounter with Death Eaters over the years where Harry had to resort to teaching them the meaning of no a few times before they would leave him alone.

Unfortunately, it had only made matters worse. As if the more of his Death Eaters Harry sent him needing a Healer, the more Voldemort was interested in him. It was unnerving and slightly irritating. Actually, that was an understatement. It was incredibly fucking irritating. It had gotten to the point where he had to wear a glamor going to work in case they tried to corner him.

Harry had gotten quite fed up with the whole lot, to be honest.

So it’s a bit of a bummer when he’s sitting in his favorite restaurant, at his usual table, his daughter next to him on a high chair, and Voldemort walks in and makes himself comfortable on Harry’s table.

_Harry’s_ fucking table. Without a fucking invitation or even a by your leave. With Harry’s _daughter_ sitting right next to him looking at the strange man and _smiling_.

Harry’s hands go very still around his chopsticks and he purses his lip.

“Now that’s a good-looking human man,” Hanh says, and she’s still miffed with him for the silencing spell and the blindfold which he’d refused to remove until the next time he’d gone back. Harry possibly understands because it had been a solid month, but he still doesn’t think it justifies _that_ type of comment at this point in time. Nor the next. “So you’ve given up on the gorgeous blonde then? Is this your new baby daddy? He’s certainly hot, for a man. I think maybe the woman would’ve been better, though. She can give you more babies. This one spits a lot, I think there’s something wrong with it.”

Harry very carefully and very effortfully doesn’t make a sound or react in any way like he understood her. And he — like the grown up, self-controlled man that he is — does _not_ put another silencing spell on her which is what he very much wants to do.

It’s a close thing though.

Tom chuckles. And Harry’s murderous thoughts towards a painting, of all things, just kind of freeze and he stares at him.

Voldemort can _laugh_? Harry had no idea and he wouldn’t have believed it if anyone told him had he not seen it himself.

Sure, he’s heard him laugh before, but it was always that high-pitched, humorless thing which was actually the furthest thing form the definition of a laugh.

This was actual amusement, and the man honest to god turns to the snake and smirks. _Smirks_.

Harry looks at his food and sniffs it discretely to make sure it’s not poisoned somehow. It doesn’t look like it, but he doesn’t discard the possibility of hallucinogenics of some sort, possibly of the mushroom variety.

“That’s very kind of you,” Tom says to Hanh, charm turned up to a hundred. “Does the human come here often, then? Do you know the baby’s mother?”

Harry goes cold and he silences Hanh with a careless hand-wave before she even has a chance to answer. She gives him an affronted look before sauntering off to the next painting, leaving and empty frame behind.

“Addie is scared of the snake when she talks,” he says.

Tom gives him a long look and Harry meets him dead on, unmoved. In the end, he says, “I see,” in a manner that makes Harry certain that he does see something, and it’s probably not good.

Adhara, for her part, is thankfully very fascinated with her food and is trying to use the children’s chopsticks to various degrees of success.She squeals in delight after a particularly rough fight and shoves a whole grain of rice in her mouth. Harry ruffles her hair affectionately, all the while never looking away from Tom.

Tom looks at Adhara, sauce smeared all over her chubby cheeks and hands, and barely contains a sneer. But he does eyes her features with curiosity and Harry just knows that he’s trying to figure out who her mother is.

“She looks a lot like you,” he casually says.

He lounges on the chair like it’s a throne, and Harry would be much more shocked about the whole him being in such a lowly place thing if not for the fact that fucking Voldemort is looking at his daughter like she’s _interesting_. Like she’s a possible bargaining chip, and Harry wants to strangle him for it. And fuck the timeline.

Harry — very calmly — puts his chopsticks down. Then he picks Adhara up and shoves a whole spoonful of rice in her mouth so she won’t complain about her food. She’s very particular about eating, his daughter, in the sense that she has to eat everything she can get her hands on and must finish it until there’s no more left, regardless of how full she is.

Harry’s one hand is free, but he doesn’t reach for his wand. Tom’s eyes narrow to it, and Harry can practically see his thoughts forming.

“It was nice seeing you, Tom,” he says, voice cool but surprisingly calm. Harry’s quite proud of himself actually. “We’ll be going now.”

Harry gets up with Adhara on his hip and Tom grabs his wrist when he takes a step forward. Harry looks down at Tom’s hand. _Touching_ him. It doesn’t burn. He didn’t think it would but was maybe kind of expecting that it might, if only so Tom would be so shocked that he’d let him go without a major fight.

Harry has his daughter on his hip, there is no way he has the inclination for a fight of any kind right now.

And he is so done fighting Voldemort. How many times would he have to kill him to be rid of him?

Harry looks up after a pause and Tom’s eyes have narrowed into slits, all pretense at politeness gone.

“Sit down, Harry.”

Harry tilts his chin up and raises an eyebrow. “No, I really won’t. I’ll be going now, and you’re going to let me leave in peace.”

Tom’s wand shows up on his other hand in the blink of an eye. Harry is reluctantly impressed. He still doesn’t reach for his own wand.

“I think you’ll be persuaded to reconsider.”

Adhara starts to fuss a bit and Harry realizes he’s been holding her a bit too tight. He bounces her up and down, wandlessly levitates another spoonful of rice into her mouth. She opens up eagerly and starts happily munching.

Harry doesn’t take his eyes off Tom and sees how his own narrow in thought at the sight, how his face takes a sheen of greed.

Tom’s eyes snap to him and Harry feels the probe of Legillimancy again, this time much more forceful, and he thinks enough is enough now.

He hits Tom with consecutive disarming and stunning spells and knows that it’s only thanks to the element of surprise and to his proficiency in silent and wandless magic that he gets away with it before Tom can react. He leaves the wand behind, drops a galleon on the table, and Apparates home, all in the span of less than a minute.

When Harry’s feet meet solid ground, he holds on to Adhara protectively, both arms wrapped around her, and he wills his panicked heart to slow the fuck down.

His house is under Fidelius, the only ones who can get in are Narcissa and Allie. There’s no way that Voldemort will follow.

They’re safe. They’re safe. His baby is safe.

He tries to tell himself that, that there’s no reason to still be hyperventilating and holding on to his daughter for dear life, but his body is having serious trouble hearing reason at the moment.

Adhara starts to whimper. She wiggles around in his arms and Harry can’t let go but he does. It’s a gargantuan effort, one of the hardest things he’s ever done, it feels like, but he puts her down.

Adhara looks up at him with watery eyes and wobbly lips. She looks like a perfect copy of Narcissa, more and more as she grows up, only Harry can’t quite picture Narcissa with this particular face on.

Harry kneels down to her level. “Sorry, Addie. That was a bad man, I’m sorry I scared you. We had to come home very fast.”

Adhara frowns and lifts up her chubby hands at him, opening and closing them a few times. “My rice?”

Harry feels a hysterical bubble of laughter erupt out of him and he succumbs to it.

In the end, Adhara looks at him with a tilted head and a very unimpressed look and he thinks — now _that_ is exactly a Narcissa look. He shakes his head and chuckles to himself and says, “Come on, we’ll ask Allie to make some yummy rice for you, okay?”

Adhara nods and runs ahead of him towards the kitchen. Because she clearly has her priorities straight. Somehow Harry has a feeling she would get along swimmingly with Ron. The thought brings a fond and nostalgic smile to his lips.

* * *

Harry doesn’t go back to work after that day. He doesn’t put in a notice or send an owl or anything, simply doesn’t show up and never looks back. He has what he wanted from the Ministry and he’d been mostly going back just to fill his day. He doesn’t particularly need the money, and he is not risking any more Death Eaters cornering him at work — or Voldemort himself — or even the possibility that they might track his owl. The house is under Fidelius, of course, but just because they can’t see it doesn’t mean they can’t find out where it is.

So he just doesn’t go back and lets them think that he’s one more of the mysterious disappearances which have been happening lately.

The downside, of course, is that he doesn’t have work to distract him from the fact that Narcissa’s wedding is rapidly approaching — and he’s not the groom.

Two months before Adhara’s second birthday, Narcissa comes home with her face set in a blank canvas, completely devoid of emotion.

Harry hasn’t seen her look like that in what feels like so long that it scares him.

“The wedding date is set,” she announces, all of her just very still.

Harry jumps off from the sofa, earning himself a side-glance form Adhara who was ‘reading’ a book next to him, but his focus is on Narcissa who has her arms crossed behind her back, chin up, back straight, and every single thing about her is just _still_. Fixed. Like she’s afraid that if she allows even an inch of her body out of her carefully weaved control that she’ll break.

Harry thinks she might.

“When?” he asks, because although he wants to reach her he knows that she won’t welcome it now. Not until she’s said everything that needs to be said.

“The 28th of August. A summer wedding. The weather is supposed to be very nice. I’ll be wearing a strapless dress, of course, to properly enjoy it and to show my future husband what he can expect for the wedding night. The invitations have been sent out, very selective. It’s all very tasteful, only the best for a Malfoy and a Black. Apparently we should expect it to be the event of the decade.”

Harry’s hands ball into fists and he doesn’t know what he wants to punch first. He knows _who_ , of course, but the slimy bastard is too far away. But now he’s seriously contemplating the merits of punching either the wall just a few steps to his right, or the door a few steps forward. The wall is closer, but the door is likely to face more damage than his hands which is a convincing argument.

Then Adhara’s little voice pipes up with, “What’s wrong mummy?” And Harry deflates a bit.

When Narcissa can’t even muster the ability to answer their daughter with more than a cool, “Nothing, little star,” Harry takes a step forward and blurts out the first words that come to his mind.

“Marry me.”

That effectively shocks the controlled mask out of Narcissa.

Harry files that information away for later, it might come in handy.

She blinks at him a few times, her arms fall to her side, hanging limply, and she looks generally just very shocked.

“Marry me,” he says again, because now that he’s said it once, now that the words he’s been wanting to say forever actually came out of his mouth, he can’t seem to say anything else. He likes the feel of them around his mouth, likes the way they boost him with a bit of confidence every time he says it, likes how they have the ability to break through to Narcissa in a way that he’s never been able to before, not when she was that far into her mask. So he says it again, “Marry me,” and more confidently this time.

He thinks he’s getting good at this whole thing.

“Mummy, you marry daddy?”

Narcissa’s eyes widen in shock and Harry smiles. “Marry me?”

She opens and closes her mouth a few times, then says, almost like it pains her, “Harry…” Like a plea. Like he’s hurting her by offering her what she wants. Because she doesn’t think she can have it.

He shakes his head, discarding her doubts, and takes a step forward. When she doesn’t react, he knows that she’s fully let go of the mask she had on before and she’ll let him in. So he takes another step forward and cradles her face in his hands.

Her eyes are very blue. There’s a sheen of wetness on them and Harry has only seen her cry once and he doesn’t want to be the reason that she cries a second time.

He fetches a strand of hair with his pinky finger and twirls it absently around, all the while holding her face in his hands like she’s precious. Because she is.

“I know that you’ll still have to get married to him.” He refuses to say the name, especially for this conversation. “But we can do this for us. We can… Allie can do the officiating for us and we can exchange vows, and I know it won’t be the perfect wedding you want or deserve, and it won’t even be official, but… but it’ll be _real_. It’ll be ours. It’ll…”

He lets his hands fall and shrugs lightly. He’s suddenly a bit overwhelmed with just how much he wants something that he didn’t let himself think of before. It consumes him almost, the idea of her being his, just his, just for a while. He wants it so desperately he can almost feel it in his bones.

“I just… I _want_ it, Narcissa. I want to marry you,” he says, because it turns out it’s all he can put into words.

Narcissa blinks rapidly and then nods vigorously and she doesn’t say anything at all but Harry doesn’t think she can speak if she’s feeling anything like he is, because there’s a huge lump in his whole chest, growing and growing until he might just burst.

She lunges into his arms and he wraps himself around her and breathes her in, and she keeps nodding and nodding and holding him tight.

And then Adhara pipes up with, “You married now?” and they both fall into a fit of laughter.

* * *

It’s all a very simple affair, which Harry is quite happy with even though he wishes he could give Narcissa more. He keeps thinking that maybe when he gets back to his time, if she doesn’t completely hate him, they can do it properly.

Allie lets out an excited squeal of pure joy when they ask her and she pops out and then back in less then a minute, this time carrying a small box in her hands.

Harry expects to feel a bit guilty about using the Hawthorne family rings but he somehow doesn’t. He thinks he feels something quite close to acceptance coming from the magic in the rings actually, and that’s an unexpectedly nice feeling.

Allie does the whole thing very seriously, her high-pitched voice almost somber. It makes Narcissa’s lips twitch with humor but her eyes are way too full of love and Harry can’t really do anything but focus on her.

Adhara holds on to the rings with a very concentrated face and then very cautiously brings them over when Allie instructs her. She looks all proud afterwards, like she had the most important job in the whole event, and both Harry and Narcissa smile at her like she did.

And then, with a kiss and a spark of elf magic, they’re declared husband and wife to the four people in the room.

It’s all quite simple really, but it’s one of the best moments in Harry’s life and he thinks that Adhara’s birth might be the only thing topping it.

Adhara whoops in joy like she actually understands what getting married entails besides passing them some pretty rings, and she excitedly lets out a spark of bright golden magic which floats right above their heads to join Allie’s.

Both Harry and Narcissa look at her in shock which quickly morphs to wonder and then they’re spinning her around the room in excited laughter and Harry can feel the magic in the air growing more and more powerful, surrounding them in happiness and love.

He goes to bed with his wife with a smile that stays there the whole night.

* * *

Narcissa marries Lucius and Harry goes to the wedding.

Partly because he’s clearly a masochist with obvious tendencies for self-torture, and partly because he wants to be there for Narcissa, in whichever small capacity he can.

He stays under his invisibility cloak the whole time because he can’t run the risk of even pollyjuice in a place crawling with Death Eaters. Narcissa knows where he is at all times though, even when he moves.

Harry feels her sending out ripples of her magic every once in a while — starry nights and sunny skies — searching for him, searching for reassurance, for comfort. Harry’s magic doesn’t stop flowing out of him towards her the whole day.

That night she doesn’t go home, and Harry sleeps on an empty bed for the first time in a long, long while. He hates it with a passion.

Adhara is difficult the next few days, although not impossible. They’d explained to her a lot of times over the past month that mummy would have to be away for a little bit but she’d come back. She’d not been happy. Had indeed sulked in her room for hours until Allie had gone in and thoroughly disciplined her.

Harry had been very impressed. Also a bit terrified of the tinny elf. He began seeing a pattern about the important women in his life that day, and he’s not sure what it says about him at all.

When Narcissa does come back, two weeks later, Adhara is prepared to be angry with her for all of five seconds before she jumps into her mother’s arms and proceeds to tell her everything she missed out on. Harry doesn’t understand half of it but Narcissa nods dutifully along, humming and ah-ing in all the appropriate places.

Adhara refuses to leave her lap so Harry is relegated to crawling over to kiss his wife and ask how her honeymoon was.

It’s moments like these where Harry has to stop a little bit and wonder what the hell is wrong with his life.

Then he decides it’s better if he just shrugs it off.

He takes a proper look at Narcissa, attentive eyes searching for everything he can find. She won’t meet his eyes so Harry’s own move to the tense lines in the corner of her eyes, the way her mouth trembles just a tad before she covers it up with a forceful purse of her lips, the way her shoulders are tight, her neck rigid.

He puts a hand on her leg and she flinches, and Harry removes it as if scalded.

She takes a forcefully controlled breath. Adhara keeps on babbling away, blissfully oblivious to the tension.

Harry’s hand stays frozen in the air in front of him and it takes him a while to process. When he does, he self-consciously removes it but doesn’t really know what to do with it. He settles for letting it fall limply on his lap.

Narcissa keeps her attention on Adhara, smiling something too forced, too pained to be genuine.

Harry’s heart _hurts_. 

He thinks of how he did this to her, how it’s his fault. How he should have let her fall in love with Lucius Malfoy, bastard that he is.

Narcissa’s hand snakes towards him, gingerly almost. She keeps looking at Adhara and speaking to her in a low voice but then she touches Harry and her hold on his thigh becomes so hard it’s almost painful.

Harry can’t really move, doesn’t know if she’d welcome any contact initiated by him, so he stays very still and doesn’t complain about her sharp red nails digging into his flesh.

“Allie.”

Allie pops in at Narcissa’s call and gives them both a very sad look which in no way makes matters better. Harry thinks she looks quite pretty with her new pink dress though, so there’s that.

Narcissa murmurs something to her that Harry is too busy focusing on all the nice details of Allie’s dress to catch, and then Allie is gone with Adhara. Probably to get food, he thinks. Their daughter is never not hungry. He doesn’t know how she’s not fat, to be honest.

He looks at the mantle on the fireplace, thinks that maybe he should do something about the photos there before he has to leave. It would bring too many questions if someone were to see.

Narcissa leans back against the back of the sofa with a breathless sigh and then tugs on his t-shirt until he joins her. She weaves her fingers through Harry’s, places their joined hands in between them on the sofa, and Harry can finally exhale.

“How—” He pauses, waves his head from side to side in hesitation. “Can I ask you how it was?”

Narcissa squeezes his hand once. “Yes.” But doesn’t continue, so Harry’s forced to ask his question properly this time and then she says, “Not great.”

Which, yeah. He can see how that’d be. So he nods and keeps bobbing his head up and down for a bit.

“I feel like a whore,” Narcissa says after a while, and her tone is so disgusted that Harry’s head snaps to her so fast his neck cracks with a loud pop.

“ _Cissa_.”

She refuses to look at him, just keeps her eyes staunchly forward. They’re kind of vacant though, so Harry knows that she’s not fully here.

“I married you not even three months ago,” she whispers, pained. “We’ve been together for four and half years and I’d never even…” She swallows, turns her head away so Harry can’t see her expression. He sees the tear though, a frozen diamond, cutting right through him. “I didn’t want to do it,” she eventually says, her voice wet.

Harry squeezes her hand, at a loss for what do say. Narcissa holds on to it like a lifeline.

Harry raises his other hand to her hair, so gingerly. He touches her scalp softly, carefully running the soft curls through his fingers. They fall like a waterfall. She doesn’t react. Doesn’t move in any way, almost doesn’t look like she’s breathing at all.

Harry swallows dryly, tugs on her head a little bit downwards. A silent invitation. She closes her eyes tightly and then lays her head on his lap slowly, back turned to him.

Harry’s fingers play with her hair for what seems like hours until Narcissa finally says, “I’m sorry.”

And Harry’s never heard her apologize and doesn’t like the sound of it coming out of her lips at all, not for this, not when she clearly has nothing to apologize for.

Then her hand falls over to rest on her belly and Harry _knows_.

He freezes a bit, thinks he should be shocked or something. Maybe angry. Perhaps disgusted at the obvious proof that his wife slept with someone else — even if that someone else is her other husband.

But he’s strangely neither of those things.

He moves his left hand slowly, gingerly places it on top of hers. She tenses, her whole body just goes rigid, and then Harry says, “Hello, little Draco,” and Narcissa deflates. Slowly at first, like there’s only a tiny hole for the pressure to come out, then all at once, and there are tears flowing freely off her closed eyes and she starts shaking with sobs, and Harry doesn’t know what to do at all.

Narcissa’s other hand comes to rest on top of his, sandwiching him and keeping him there, on her pregnant belly, still flat, and she cries and cries and cries in silent sobs which shake her body but she refuses to make a sound.

Harry puts his right hand on her hair, leans forward to kiss her brow, tastes her tears on his lips.

He thinks she’s relieved as well as hurting because she just holds on to him like she’ll lose herself if she lets go and Harry’s heart breaks.

He shushes her with soft whispers, murmurs comforting words, lets her cry her heart out like he’s never seen before. He wonders just how much pain she’d accumulated inside of her because she cries for a long time without showing signs of slowing down.

Eventually, Harry can’t take it anymore, can’t handle seeing Narcissa separate herself from him like that, even the tiniest bit, so he pulls her up and turns her so she sits on his lap properly and holds her close to his chest. She weighs almost nothing and he wonders if she’s even eaten these past two weeks.

The thought upsets him so he puts it away and cradles her head on his shoulder. She’s reluctant to let go and he knows that it’s because she never allows herself to be fully vulnerable, to be completely taken care of, not even by him. He holds her tighter though, encouraging, and breaths a sigh of relief when she nuzzles into his neck.

His shoulder is wet, his t-shirt too, and his legs kind of hurt because even though she is light, she’s still a grown woman, but he doesn’t care about that one bit.

When Narcissa starts to calm down a bit, the sobs receding, Harry tentatively places his hand back on her belly. She makes a sound and he thinks maybe he’s made her cry harder again but then she shakes her head and laces her fingers over his and he knows that it was a disbelieving chuckle because she says, “You’re a strange one, Harry.”

Harry can’t help but chuckle a bit himself. He presses a kiss to her hair and she leans her head back a bit to look at him, blue eyes very wet and very bright and very sad.

“Why? Because I’m weirdly happy you’re pregnant.”

Narcissa looks at him like he’s some kind of peculiar miracle and Harry bites his lip. “Yes,” she says. “Because I’m pregnant with another man’s baby.”

He hears the hurt in her voice even as she tries to make it into a joke. But he shrugs and says, “I happen to like Draco quite a bit regardless of who his father is.” He wobbles his head a bit from side to side, then concedes, “Well, he was kind of an arse for a long time,” and Narcissa smacks him lightly, affronted for her baby’s sake. Harry holds her hand and laces their fingers together, effectively trapping her. “It’s true, though, he was. And I think that that means that Lucius had a much bigger influence on him than you, because I know you, and… well. You’ll see, I suppose. But the point is that now we’re very good friends and I’m quite happy to get to experience this.” He pauses, frowns. Narcissa gives him a peculiar look and Harry says, “Huh. That is rather strange, yeah.”

She laughs. “Just a tad, yes.”

Harry kisses her and she tastes salty from the tears. He smiles at her, rubs his hand on her belly in slow circles. “Maybe. But I’ve always been a bit of an odd one, haven’t I?” he says with amusement. Narcissa rolls her eyes fondly and he feels better already at seeing her recover. “But I am happy that you’re pregnant with Draco. He’s the one good thing to come out of this shite situation, isn’t he?”

Narcissa sighs, gives him a small smile, and then nods. She closes her eyes and snakes her hand underneath his on her belly and her smiles grows. “Yes. He is.”


	8. Chapter 8

Harry feels like this pregnancy goes much faster than the first one, and he’s sure he doesn’t like it one bit.

With Adhara, they had been so excited to meet her that it felt like it was taking forever. Now, they’re just as excited, but it feels like time is approaching too fast. Harry thinks the big difference is that Draco’s birthday is all too close to the summer solstice when he will have to leave, and he’s not looking forward to that at all.

Narcissa spends a lot less time at home what with having to be at the manor often enough that it doesn’t raise suspicions about her having a whole other family. She also doesn’t spend her nights at home except for when Lucius goes away on business travels, which is not often enough in Harry’s opinion.

Harry’s consumed with nerves when she’s not with him because he knows exactly the kind of people Lucius associates with. He often has vivid flashes of Narcissa hosting Voldemort in the manor for months on end and the thought makes him panic to the point of being nauseated with fear.

So when she does manage to escape and come home, Harry spends every possible moment with her, listening to her talk, watching her play with Adhara, getting lost in the sound of piano music drifting through the house.

He also gets very excited about the new baby and he has these moments where he’ll feel so much like he felt when it was Adhara growing in her belly that it confuses him. Draco is his friend, he’s not… It’s too strange to think about it, so Harry tries his best to ignore it.

Adhara is very excited about her new brother but she’s not impressed in the least that her mother spends so much time away. Somehow she’s become convinced that Narcissa has to go away to grow the baby and she’ll often roll her eyes, let out a long-suffering sigh, and then pat Narcissa’s belly with an exasperated, “Grow fast, Draco, I want my mummy back.”

It always manages to make them both laugh and want to cry because the faster he grows the closer it comes for Harry to leave.

They’re in bed, a savored treasure these days. Lucius is away on business, to France supposedly. Narcissa is quite sure his ‘business’ is more in line with recruiting people and spreading Voldemort’s message. Whatever it is, it gives them both a well deserved week as a family.

“He’s not…” Narcissa drifts off, her voice getting lost in the dark.

“Hmm?” Harry is half asleep already, curling around Narcissa’s body, one hand caressing her growing belly.

Narcissa inhales, exhales, then again. She’s hesitating, and that makes Harry’s sleepy brain wake up a little bit. Something must be bothering her.

He kisses her neck. “He’s not?”

Narcissa sighs. “Lucius. He’s not… he’s not that horrible,” she says, a mix of reluctant and cautious. Like she’s begrudgingly admitting it and expecting Harry to react badly.

Harry works the information around his brain, thinks of a man who in the end just wanted to protect his family against his bad decisions.

“No, I don’t imagine he is,” he finally says. 

“You’re supposed to hate him,” Narcissa says, only half teasing.

“Hmm. I do a bit. He’s married to my wife, after all,” he agrees. “But I… remember how he was with his family. He wasn’t all bad. A lot of bad choices, definitely the wrong education for Draco, but not an entirely bad father or husband. I’m quite sure his family has always been the most important thing.”

Narcissa doesn’t say anything for a long while but Harry knows that she’s not fallen asleep yet. There’s still something on her mind.

“He’s… _nice_ ,” she says, like the word has to be forced out of her lips. “To me, not to everyone else. But to me…”

“He loves you?”

Harry supposes he ought to be more disturbed by the idea. They had always assumed it would be a marriage of convenience, a union between powerful families. Strangely, the idea that Lucius might love his wife is… comforting.

Narcissa moves her hand down to her belly, runs her fingers over the back of his hand.

“I think so,” she says, almost a whisper. “Perhaps not… not fully. I don’t know that he’s capable of that.”

“I think he is.”

“Hmm. Maybe. But I wasn’t expecting him to be so… caring.”

She’s hesitating a lot with her words tonight, like she’s still getting used to the idea, like it baffles her. Harry supposes he would be baffled too if he didn’t have images of the future to help clarify things.

“He’s excited about the baby. He’s always going on about how he’ll give him the best life and teach him everything he needs to know to be a proper man.”

Harry feels a sharp pang at the notion that _he_ won’t be there to teach Draco that. That what Draco will have for most of his life are a skewed view of the world and a bad role model. He wants to be there, he wants to teach Draco how to be kind and loving and compassionate. He wants… a lot of things he can’t have.

“Does he…” He stops, unsure of how to voice his doubt. They haven’t ever spoken about this, not since Narcissa came back from her honeymoon. He takes a fortifying breath and says, “Does he treat you well? He doesn’t— doesn’t force himself on you, does he?”

He feels her shake her head even before he’s finished asking and breathes out in relief.

“No. No, he wouldn’t be alive if he did,” she says, a clear undertone reminding him she’s a Black through and through. “He is…” She clears her throat, finishes with, “Considering.”

“Good. Good.”

He thinks he hears her breathe out a “Yes,” but he can’t be sure.

They stay quiet for a long while, the air filled with a strange tension. Finally, he voices his thoughts. “Will you… will you let him love you?”

“What?”

“It’s just… I’ll be gone, Cissa, for a really long time, and he’ll be your husband. Your only available husband,” he adds, though the joke falls flat to his own ears. She squeezes his hand too hard and he knows it pains her to hear it but he has to get it off his chest. “I would be less worried if I knew that he’s taking care of you when I… when I can’t.”

“Harry—”

“I just want you to be loved, Cissa. You deserve the whole world.”

“I just need you,” she says, the same petulant brand of stubbornness that shines through Adhara more and more often.

Harry sighs. “I know. I know that, I know you don’t deserve any of this, but at least…” He runs a hand through his hair, unable to put this strange feeling in his chest to proper words. “I don’t know. I don’t really know what I’m saying.”

All he wants is for her to be happy, to make the most out of this shitty hand they’ve been dealt with, and if that means that Lucius will be the one to be there for her, then so be it. At least she’ll have someone who’s devoted to her.

Narcissa moves her hand and places it right over his heart. It’s cool and smooth and he immediately feels the soothing tendrils of magic she sends him, spreading towards the rest of his body. He shivers at the feel of it, the feel of _her_ inside of him.

“A friend, perhaps,” she carefully says after a while. “I can see him as a friend.”

Harry swallows hard, heart still beating fast, body thrumming with foreign yet incredibly familiar magic.

“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be great. I just don’t want you to be alone for so long.”

Her hand moves back to rest on her belly. “I won’t be.”

Harry kisses her hair. “I know, I know. I would just… It’d be nice to know you at least have a friend in that cold mausoleum, you know? That you don’t spend your whole life hating every second of it.”

She’s quiet for a long while. “I won’t. I’ll make sure I don’t.”

* * *

“You’re taking her,” Narcissa says one day, hand on her round belly. She’s seven months along and indulging in Allie’s signature chocolate cake, and she was making sinful noises just a second ago but now she looks as serious and determined as anything.

“Hmm? Who?”

“Adhara. You’re taking her when you go back to your time,” she says. Like it’s decided, just like that.

Harry blinks at her a few times, trying to assimilate what she’s saying. “Cissa… I— How do you even know the spell will take her?”

“I don’t care if I have to attach her to you with a permanent sticking charm, she’s going with you.”

Harry stares at her for a long moment, categorizes the familiar determination in all her features, notices the stubborn lines on her eyes and lips. She’s a woman used to getting what she wants and Harry has certainly not been the one to disabuse her of that notion, but this is different. This is Narcissa defending her child and she looks like there will be no stopping her.

Still. “Cissa, I’ll be gone for twenty-five years. It’ll be seconds for me but you’ll spend—”

He stops, unable to voice that again. It’s a pain that consumes him at all times, the very idea that she will spend so long without him, with Lucius… He thinks he might just give anything up to make it not so.

But now it’s not just him, it’s Adhara. Harry had been holding on to hope that Narcissa would hide her away with Allie until the time came. Until the war was over, at least. Anything to keep her safe.

It seems she has a different definition of safe.

“You won’t see her for twenty-five years, Cissa. You can’t seriously be considering this.”

Narcissa doesn’t look at him but her grip on the fork is tight, her knuckles white, and she looks straight ahead, face set.

“You’re taking her. I won’t risk it, I won’t risk her.”

“You can hide her! You can keep her here, for Merlin’s sake. The house is under Fidelius, Allie will help you when you can’t be here.”

She turns to him, then, eyes burning. “And have my daughter be raised by an elf for most of her life? Because that’s how it’ll be, Harry. It’s already bad enough, I can’t spend as much time with her as she needs me to, but she has you at least. There might be times where it’ll be days before I can see her.” She shakes her head. “No, I won’t have it. And what about Hogwarts? She’ll get a letter. I hid her from the tapestry but there’s no hiding her from the Hogwarts register. What happens when a letter comes for Adhara Potter? What then? She goes to school a few years above you? You get to walk by her on the corridor and have no idea who she is? She has to pretend not to know her own father?”

Harry watches her, horrified. He’d never even thought about that, had never gone that far with thinking how having a daughter born technically before him would change everything.

“She’s going with you, Harry,” Narcissa says, softer yet still sure. “I’ll… I’ll wait. I’ll wait for both of you.”

Harry’s paralyzed with the thought of how much pain she will be in, waiting for half her family for a whole quarter-century. He can’t even— Sweet Merlin, but he can’t even comprehend how strong his wife is to even suggest such a thing.

“I’ll wait,” she says again, like she’s trying to convince him, trying to tell him it’s alright.

And Harry wants to scream because it’s not alright at all. Nothing is alright. It is, in fact, the very opposite of alright, but such is his life and he doesn’t throw tantrums about how bloody unfair it is anymore. He fucking keeps going.

He nods, tersely. Can’t say anything else because he might just break if he does, but he has to keep it together, for all of them.

* * *

Draco is born on the 5th of June, 1980. Harry is not there to see it, but he holds him only a few hours later, hidden beneath his invisibility cloak in Narcissa’s room.

He’s all pink and squishy and completely bald, not even eyebrows, and Harry thinks he’s also the prettiest baby he’s ever seen. It consumes him then, the feeling he gets when he looks at the little boy in his arms. It’s not supposed to go like this, not at all. Draco is his friend, they grew up hating each other and then reluctantly liking each other, but they are the same age — or were, until relatively recently — and Harry is not supposed to have these feelings at all when he looks at him.

It’s like he’s holding Adhara, like he’s holding his own son, and it’s so, so messed up.

But then he looks at Narcissa, soft smile on her face when she sees the two of them together, and it doesn’t feel so strange at all. It feels _right_.

This is his wife’s baby and so he’s his as well. Simple as that, really.

Harry smiles and kisses his little brow and calls him his little dragon and Draco scratches his cheek with his surprisingly sharp nails and Harry thinks with not so little amusement — this is exactly right.

Narcissa goes to her parents’ house to spend the first month of her postpartum because it’s tradition and one that she very much wishes to keep alive. The new mother spends the first month at her parents’ home where she can get all the help she needs from her mother and learn all the things a baby needs.

Only it’s not Narcissa’s first baby at all and she’s always been a natural and there are house elves to help at the Manor as well, but it’s certainly not something that either of them will even mention.

Narcissa stays at her parents’ house and Tibby and Elly help her sneak in Harry and Adhara every day without her parents finding out.

Adhara’s first reaction at seeing Draco is, “Finally! Took you long enough to grow,” followed by a very Narcissa-like eye roll. The second reaction is, “He’s ugly. Can we get a new one?”

Harry tries very hard not to laugh while Narcissa very patiently explains that no, they cannot return him and he is indeed finished growing in her belly, now he has to grow outside. That seems to make Adhara somewhat appeased because she sighs in exaggerated relief and pats his cheeks and says, “Oh, thank Merlin! I was worried he was going to stay ugly.”

Harry does laugh, then, because his daughter is turning out to be every bit as dramatic as her mother. Narcissa merely gives him one of her eye rolls and then proceeds to tell Adhara that she must be more careful with the baby because he’s still very small.

Adhara quickly loses interest in playing with Draco for longer than five minutes every day after that, and the first thing she says to him when they arrive in Narcissa’s room is, ”Hurry up already, I want someone to play with.”

In those moments, Harry is very glad for Draco that he doesn’t grow up with a big sister to make him do everything she wants. The moment straight after, Harry thinks that that is exactly what Draco had needed growing up; it would certainly teach him some things.

Harry holds Narcissa in his arms, missing her like crazy with how short their time together has been and with how precious little time they have left. Narcissa leans her head on his shoulder, Draco softly asleep in her arms.

Adhara runs over to the bed after getting bored of playing with Elly and says, “Mummy can you come home now? You’ve already grown Draco.”

Narcissa sighs sadly but smiles, strained though it is, and says, “I’m afraid not, darling. Draco still needs me while he’s so small.”

“But he can come with! Or he can stay with daddy for a bit and you can come home tonight. Please? Just tonight? You never put me to bed anymore,” she finishes with a pout, and they both know that it’s really bothering her that Narcissa has been away for so long.

Narcissa's hand reaches for Harry blindly, catching hold of his forearm and gripping. So tight that Harry knows it’ll leave a mark.

Harry feels his heart constrict but he pats the bed next to him and Adhara reluctantly allows herself to be picked up. She looks like she’s not sure she’s wanted anymore and Harry holds her tight and places her in between him and Narcissa. Draco makes a little noise of protest at all the movement but then quiets down.

“Addie, you know that mummy wants to be with you every day, yeah? It’s just that right now she can’t, not as much as she wants to,” Harry says.

Narcissa turns her head away, sucks in a pained breath through her teeth. Harry gently takes Draco from her so that she can pick Adhara up. Adhara goes like she’s fighting with herself, like she wants to but is also angry, and Harry hurts for all of them.

“I want to, my little star,” Narcissa says. A lone tear falls down her cheek and she doesn’t bother wiping it away or hiding. Harry holds Draco closer to him.

“But why can’t you come home, mummy? Why don’t you sleep there no more? Don’t you miss home?” Adhara whispers.

Narcissa closes her eyes and runs her hand through Adhara’s dark curls. They’re long now, she refuses to have her hair cut, and it falls down mid-back in loose curls. Harry marvels at the sight often, glad that she can make the Potter hair work.

“Baby… Draco he—”

“Then Draco can stay with daddy here and you come home with me,” Adhara pleads, lower lip wobbling. “Please mummy, please. I miss you.”

Narcissa breaths out “Addie,” like it physically pains her, and Adhara starts crying because her mum never calls her Addie unless something is wrong and Harry knows that she’s smart enough to realize that.

“Why can’t we all go home together? Why? Just because of a new baby? But we’re a _family_ , we belong together. We belong together,” she repeats, full-on sobbing now, the words coming out in broken intervals. “It says so— in all the stories and— _you_ say so. Family belongs— together and we’re— family! _My_ mummy and— _my_ daddy and— _my_ Draco.” At one point the crying gets to be so hard that they stop understand what she’s saying.

Harry shares a look with Narcissa, both at a loss, both so pained, both so helpless. It’s not fair, he thinks, it’s not fucking fair. Their little girl doesn’t deserve this at all and he can’t even imagine what will happen when he takes her to his time and she’s faced with a mother and a brother twenty-five years older.

Harry casts a silencing spell over Draco so he won’t wake up with the noise and Narcissa bounces a desolate Adhara around the room, desperately trying to calm her down to no avail. Elly takes pity on Harry and holds out his arms for Draco and Harry passes him over with relief. At least one of their children is alright.

Narcissa gives him a desperate look when he approaches them and Adhara just keeps on crying and sobbing and punching her little hands on Narcissa’s shoulders. Harry holds them both in his arms and makes shushing noises and rubs his hand over and over Adhara’s back.

He mouths “Piano magic” at Narcissa who looks near tears, but then she sucks in a sharp breath and begins to sing. Her voice is soft, almost like a whisper, and she’s not saying any words, merely a melody, but it’s one of the most hauntingly beautiful things Harry has ever heard.

She sings right from her heart, the magic flowing right off of her, and Harry and Adhara and then Draco and Elly are surrounded by comforting waves of dark blue magic with sparkling silver in between. It’s starry nights and Narcissa’s scent and it’s like feeling her arms and her love all around them.

Adhara stops crying almost abruptly and looks around the room with big, teary eyes. Then she looks at Narcissa, lip wobbling, and says, “Mummy,” so brokenly that Narcissa makes a little sound of distress and Harry feels a knife piercing through him.

He hugs them tighter, both his girls, and hears Narcissa’s soothing, cool voice tell their daughter how much she’s loved. She still makes the magic come out of her voice, even without the melody, and Harry marvels at her talent.

When Adhara falls asleep, emotionally exhausted, Narcissa looks at him beseechingly.

“We have to tell her, Harry. I don’t know how we’re going to explain this to her, but we have to tell her something. Her baby brother will be—” she cuts off, unable to say any more, and Harry sighs and nods, his chest tight.

“I know. He’ll be as old as you are in two weeks. We’ll… We’ll think of something. It’ll be alright.” When Narcissa eyes him dubiously, Harry repeats it. “It will be. It has to be alright.”

He doesn’t think she believes him. Or even that he believes it himself.


	9. Chapter 9

On June 20th, 2005, at 11:44 a.m., Harry lands in a familiar room with his daughter wrapped tightly in his arms.

He has just said goodbye to his wife, had watched as she cried and whispered loving words to Adhara, had hugged his tiny Draco, had kissed him and told him to _try_ , to listen to his mother, to not be so hard on himself. And then they were pulled and spun round and round and so fast that he was afraid Adhara would fly off his arms even with the sticking charm.

They land in the living room of the house he’s been living in for the past five and a half years — his house, for all intents and purposes — and it feels… empty.

She’s not there.

Harry had expected this, of course. He had gone back in time with only Hermione, Ron, and Draco in the room. They look exactly as he remembers them, even in the same positions, if his memory serves him right, so it must only have been a few seconds for them.

And still, he feels her absence like he’s missing half his soul.

Adhara leans back from his arms with a grunt and a face that shows exactly what she thought of that particular mode of transportation. Harry heartily agrees.

“Alright, Addie?”

She nods, slowly. “Mummy?”

Harry swallows all his doubts down and says, “Soon, Addie. We’ll see her soon.”

He looks around then, at the faces of his friends and his… Draco. Ron and Hermione look completely shocked.

“Is that a child?” Ron croaks out.

“Harry?” Hermione asks, her eyes snapping from him to Adhara at top speed, brain taking in the hair and the eyes and making all the connections.

Draco looks… Happy? Harry blinks. He’s smiling so brightly, like Harry has never seen him before, looking at him like he missed him. Looking at Adhara like he missed her too.

Harry squints, tries to process, then Adhara squeals in his arms and says, “Draco! You finally grew!”

And then she throws herself at him and Draco catches her, spins her around the room with a laugh and kisses her cheek and says, “Hello, big sis. Or is it little sis now?”

“I’m big!” She counters, offended to be considered otherwise. “You grew fast. You’re very tall now. Did you eat loads of porridge?”

Draco nods seriously. “I did. Allie makes the best porridge.”

Adhara nods as well, seemingly pleased with this explanation.

And Harry stares and stares and stares.

How had she even— _Oh_. The photo. Narcissa must have shown her Harry’s photo of his friends, wrinkled even under the preservation charm due to all the times he’d pull it out to try to quench the ache of missing them.

Meanwhile, Ron lets out a squeaky, “ _Sister_?”

And Hermione’s eyes narrow even further, looking from Harry to Adhara to Draco and back.

Harry’s too busy looking at the sight of his children laughing to pay his friends any mind. When he can’t take it anymore he steps forward, hesitantly, afraid of being rejected.

Draco spots him, raises his eyes from Adhara’s infinite questions, and gifts Harry with the softest smile he’s ever directed at him. “Welcome back, dad.”

And Harry all but trips in his rush to get closer, hugs him tightly, fiercely, can’t let go for a whole few minutes because he had just been holding this tiny baby in his arms and now he’s so _big_ , and his life wasn’t easy, and Harry wasn’t there to protect him like he wanted to, and he wasn’t there to teach him how to walk or how to talk or how to be a good man and Draco went through so much. But he made it, he became a man Harry is proud of and it’s all just…

Harry hugs him tighter.

Adhara grunts in protest, squeezed between both of them, and Draco lets out a soft, “It’s good to have you back.”

Harry pulls back, ignores Adhara’s disgruntled look, ruffles her hair. Then does the same to Draco, suffers an identical eye roll — a very Narcissa-like eye roll — and says, “Addie’s right. You have grown. I was just holding you in my arms and you were this big.” He puts his hands a few centimeters apart, purposefully exaggerating just how small he’d been.

Draco shakes his head but smiles fondly and says, “You have grey hair now.” Which is such a Draco thing to say and Harry smiles because yes, he does have a few grey hairs now, and it makes him feel better to at least be five years older than Draco with all these paternal feelings he’s been having lately.

“Okay, what the hell is going on? Why the hell is Malfoy calling you dad, and who’s the little girl?” Ron says, and Harry can hear the irritation in his voice.

He snaps out of their little family bubble and does feel bad now that he realizes his friends have no idea what is happening. And he misses them. A lot. He turns around, smiles widely and goes to hug them and explain, and then the front door opens with a bang and Harry hears very distinctive heels clicking down the hall.

Adhara does too, her smile bright and her eyes excited and she shimmies down Draco’s arms and yells, “Mummy!” before taking off at a run.

She crashes into her mother just as Narcissa walks into the room and Narcissa has her in her arms before Harry can even blink.

She holds her close, eyes closed, nose pressed right by Adhara’s hair, and Adhara talks about all the new things which have happened in the past five minutes they’ve been apart which mainly consists of Draco growing up _a lot,_ and daddy’s friends coming over to play.

Only it’s not been five minutes for Narcissa at all.

Narcissa has tears falling down her cheeks when she opens her eyes after a good few minutes, looking at Adhara with all her love, and Harry is still frozen in his spot at the sight of her.

He knows this woman, knew her before he even went back in time. He knows how beautiful she is, how cold, how distant. She’s always been there, in the back of his mind, but separate from _his_ Narcissa.

This is Narcissa Malfoy and she doesn’t like him at all, and Harry doesn’t know what to do for a moment.

He takes an unconscious step then aborts the movement midair and it ends up coming out as more of a jerk. He wants to run to her so badly, wants to hold her in his arms and never let go, but he’s so scared.

It’s been twenty-five years for her and she’s been through so much and he has no idea how she’ll receive him. No matter all the assurances she gave him that she wouldn’t be angry with him, that she would wait for him, that she would still love him, Harry still feels like this Narcissa hates him. That she has every reason to.

Heart hammering away in his chest, Harry breathes quickly, eyes running wild as he takes in as much as he can about his wife while he’s still in that precious period of uncertainty where her answer might just be that she doesn’t hate him.

He feels a hand on his shoulder, comforting, familiar, and then Draco’s voice is soft and encouraging when he says, “Dad… She’s been waiting.”

And Harry’s eyes meet Narcissa Malfoy’s at that exact moment and he sees her mask fall completely, sees the face of his wife, sees Narcissa Potter looking right at him, eyes brimming with love and longing and grief.

Harry runs, almost stumbles over his feet in his hurry, hears Ron’s distant voice let out a shocked, “What the bloody hell is going on?” and then promptly blocks out all the rest except his wife standing in front of him because she has been _waiting_.

“Cissa?”

Narcissa nods, gives him a shaky smile, like she’s shy, like he might not want her now that he’s face to face with the woman she became.

Harry presses forward and kisses her, passionately, Adhara squeezed in between their arms. She lets out a squeak in protest and forces her way down and Harry hears her little footsteps running off, towards Draco hopefully. He’s too busy focusing on reuniting with his wife after a whole five minutes separation.

Except it’s not at all. Not for him and certainly not for her.

She feels the same. She kisses the same, all passion and love, and he melts right into her. He pulls back when he can’t breathe anymore, leans his forehead on hers, smiles. “I missed you,” he whispers.

She chuckles wetly, still crying a bit. “It’s been a few minutes for you, love.”

But he’s already shaking his head because it’s not. He didn’t get to grow older with her like he wanted to, didn’t get to spend the past twenty-five years by her side.

He takes a good look at her then, sees her with new eyes, not as the woman he knew before he went back in time, but as the woman his wife became.

And she’s still so stunning that she takes his breath away.

Her hair is shorter, falling in loose curls around her shoulders, but it’s still the same color and it still smells like sunshine, which makes him smile with fond memories. Her eyes are the same, vibrant blue, though now there are a few lines in the corners. Her features are perhaps less soft than what he had become used to, sharper, more mature. But she’s still so gorgeous — and she’s still his wife.

He places his hands around her face. “You’re beautiful,” he says, voice full of wonder. “Fuck, Cissa, so, so beautiful.”

She quirks her lips then, makes a little face like she doesn’t fully accept it, and he knows it’s the age thing, had known that would be a problem.

“Hey. I knew you before, yeah? I first saw you when I was fourteen-years-old and I thought you were one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen then. And I didn’t like you very much.” He grins roguishly and she doesn’t roll her eyes but he thinks it’s a close thing. He moves his hand, caresses her cheek with his thumb. She closes her eyes again, leans into it. “Now I think you’re simply the most stunning woman in the world and I love you with all my heart, Cissa.”

Narcissa kisses him without opening her eyes, like he’s the very air she needs to breathe, like he’ll disappear again right in front of her eyes if she doesn’t hold him close enough.

Harry lets her, lets her get used to having him back, holds her just as tightly in his arms, learns the new shape of her body. Not that different, just a few things here and there. He still loves all of her.

“You came back,” she finally says, whispered against his lips like a prayer.

“Of course I did, Cissa. And I’m so sorry for having kept you waiting for so long.”

“Okay, what the bloody hell is going on here! Draco’s been spinning some crazy story about you marrying _Narcissa bloody Malfoy,_ Harry? The fuck is that about, then?”

Harry sighs but, before he can find the patience to answer calmly, Narcissa moves him to the side a bit so she can presumably face Ron and says, “My daughter is still in the room, Mr Weasley, so you’d best mind your language. And it’s Narcissa _Potter_ , by the way,” she sniffs haughtily.

Harry tries to stifle a laugh but when he turns around and sees Ron’s face and then meets Draco’s eyes, he’s gone for.

“Oh dear, I knew the ritual would break him,” Hermione says to Draco, but her lips are twitching and her tone is humorous and she’s clearly already made all the connections there were to be made and seems to be having a much easier time accepting it then Ron.

Ron splutters, gawks at Harry and Narcissa like they’ve lost their minds.

Adhara pipes up from Draco’s arms, “Where’s my Allie?” Because she’s apparently in that phase where everything and everyone belongs to her.

Allie pops up, clearly hearing the call, and Adhara makes a mad dash for her little arms.

“Allie! Why are you wearing that?” She furrows her brows at Allie’s pillowcase, an M embroidered on it. It’s clean at least, but Harry still feels very uneasy about Narcissa’s obvious choice.

“Oh, I is missing you so much, little Mistress!” Allie says, throwing her arms around Adhara.

Harry smiles, then goes over to give her a hug as well.

“You look very well, Allie. Now what do you say we throw away that uniform and find you a new one?” Because he can’t stand for one more second the sight her in anything but her colorful dresses and how happy she always was to wear them. Allie’s eyes fill with tears and then the next second she has on a blue dress with sparkly stars on it and Harry’s smile widens. “Beautiful as always.”

“I is missing you too, Master Harry.”

“Okay now, mate, am I seriously being ignored in all of this? That was clearly a Malfoy elf and now she’s your elf?”

“She was never a Malfoy elf, Mr. Weasley,” Narcissa cooly says. “She’s a Hawthorne elf, and this is Hawthorne Manor.”

“Did you take good care of Narcissa, Allie? And Draco?” he whispers while Ron goes on a tangent about Harry clearly not being a Hawthorne.

Allie nods very seriously. “I did, yes, Master Harry. It is not being easy, no. Mistress is being… sad,” she whispers very softly. “Very sad, for many years. And Master Draco is being a very difficult child, listening to Master Lucius too much, but they is being better now, after the war.”

Harry nods, gives her a kiss and a thank you, lets her go back to playing with Adhara.

Narcissa snakes her arm around his waist and leans into him. “Gotten your full report already?”

Harry laughs ruefully. “Not even close.” He kisses her cheek. “You’ll tell me everything, yeah? Even what you think I don’t want to know?”

Narcissa dips her head a fraction, a solemn look on her face. “Of course.”

“Harry, dear,” Hermione says, tearing his eyes away from his wife. She gives him a little expectant look and Harry smiles sheepishly.

He runs over, hugs her tight, kisses her cheek. “I’ve missed you, Hermione. So freaking much. You’re a godmother, by the way.” Hermione’s eyes go wide with pleased surprise and Harry grins.

Then he goes over to Ron and drags him into a hug, confused fella that he is at the moment. “Missed you too, Ron. And you’re a godfather too. Now be a good mate and try not to insult my wife, will you? She’ll kill you and then I’ll have to hide the body, and that doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, does it?”

Narcissa walks over to Adhara, clearly unable to be parted from her for long, picks her up, and peppers her with kisses before calmly walking back with Adhara on her hip.

“I wouldn’t go that far, dear. He’s your best friend. Perhaps just some simple cursing would suffice.”

Harry grins widely at the look of his two favorite girls together again. “That’s nice of you, love.”

Ron lets out a chocked noise. “You— You were serious, mate? You married _her_?”

Harry hums distractedly, nuzzling a kiss to Narcissa’s neck. “Yup. Best thing I ever did. Besides the kids,” he says, and Adhara smiles widely.

“I made sparks,” she says proudly, and Harry remembers just how happy they’d all been that day.

Ron splutters. “Kids. Plural. As in _Malfoy_? Are you mental?”

Adhara gives Ron an affronted look, more for the tone of voice than actually understanding his words, Harry thinks. Narcissa looks at him snidely and opens her mouth with what is sure to be a scathing remark but Harry beats her to it.

“Probably a bit, yeah,” he nods sagely, covering Adhara’s ears and ignoring her glare. “Time travel has a tendency to mess with a person’s head. Also,” he concedes, “Dying and then coming back and then going back in time and being flirted with by the man who killed you and then you killed. That too.”

Hermione and Draco come closer and Hermione tickles Adhara, who has twisted around enough to break free of Harry’s hands.

“I’m sorry what? Are you saying you met Voldemort in the past?”

“And he _flirted_ with you?” Draco sneers in disgust.

“He was actually quite handsome, wasn’t he, Cissa?”

Ron chokes on “Cissa,” repeats it like he’s still in shock.

Harry gives him a pitying look.

Narcissa opts for completely ignoring his existence, which Harry thinks is the best thing for his friend’s health at the moment. “Hmm. I suppose he was handsome, yes. When he had a nose and hair. I reckon dying and coming back didn’t agree with him.”

“Yup. It’s not for everyone. Not everyone comes back looking like me.”

“You— Hermione! They’ve gone mental? Did you mess up the ritual? Was he lost in an alternate dimension?”

Hermione just scoffs and says, “Please Ronald.” Like she’d ever make that type of mistake. Ludicrous, really.

* * *

Eventually, everything calms down and Harry explains the last five and a half years to Ron, Hermione, and Draco, though the last one clearly knows a lot more than Harry would’ve thought.

“Oh, that does explain it,” Hermione says after he’s done with the whole story, her face doing that thing where she quickly connects different facts and comes up with a logical conclusion.

But it’s often all done while everyone else is clueless, so Harry’s forced to ask, “Explains what?”

Hermione clears her head off her daze with a little shake. “Narcissa gave us the book. The one with the ritual?”

“ _Oh_.” Harry looks at his wife, quietly reading their daughter a story across the room. She looks so blissfully happy that Harry’s heart feels like it might just burst at the sight.

“Yes, it was all quite convenient at the time, and we were so busy being grateful that I didn’t actually think too much about how exactly she found what we needed so fast.”

“I wouldn’t say fast, you guys were holed up in that library for three days straight,” Ron points out.

“Draco and I were, yes,” Hermione impatiently says, “But that was because we didn’t ask for help. As soon as Draco did, Narcissa brought us the book in five minutes.”

“Why didn’t you ask your mother earlier, Draco?” Harry asks curiously. It’s clear that Draco knew he had successfully time traveled and Narcissa had probably shared how Harry had done it.

Draco darts a quick look at his mother and then speaks in a low voice. “Mother never told me how you’d done it, only that you had. I was scared at first of… bringing up memories,” he finishes carefully.

Hermione squeezes his hand in understanding and Harry’s heart tugs painfully at the notion that Draco must have avoided him in conversation much more often than that to spare his mother’s feelings.

“Hermione, Ron, can we… Can you give Draco and me a moment?”

Ron looks a bit befuddled still but Hermione gives him an understanding smile and drags Ron by the arm. “We’ll head home, Harry, you should catch up with your family.” Harry smiles gratefully and hugs her. “The grey hair suits you, by the way. You look very distinguished.”

Harry laughs warmly and she winks at him playfully before kissing Draco and saying goodbye to Narcissa and Adhara. Ron follows dutifully along but Harry’s quite sure the poor fellow is still in a daze. They’ll have to have a proper chat at some point, but that will not be today.

“Hermione wait!” He runs after her when the thought that he doesn’t want to deal with anything but his family settles in and for the first time in a long time, he remembers why all of this has happened anyways. “The cure,” he says, summoning it out of his mokeskin pouch and tossing it to her.

She rolls her eyes at him fondly but sends him an understanding look in the next second.

“I’ll take care of it, you enjoy your family. You’ve more than deserved it.”

Harry beams. “Thanks, Hermione.”

When he walks back over to Draco, he’s suddenly feeling a bit unsure. Draco looks much the same, his posture rigid and his thumb rubbing circles over his fingers, a gesture he obviously picked up from Narcissa.

It makes Harry smile and the reminder that the little baby he was holding just a few hours ago grew into this man who so resembles his mother in some things is enough to help him let go of a bit of his awkwardness.

“I… don’t really know where to start,” he says impishly, and Draco quirks his lips teasingly.

“The beginning?”

“Ha. Right, not so sure where that is either with a time loop type of scenario, do I? I mean, I’ve always thought of you as my childhood rival and then friend and now… son,” he says out loud, the words falling in place perfectly. Draco smiles, a small thing but heartfelt. “But has it been the other way around for you? Did you even know who I was before? Did—”

“Dad.”

Harry stops, clamps his mouth shut with much effort, heart hammering away in his chest for unknown reasons. Draco turns to face him a bit better, sitting almost sideways on the sofa, one arm resting on the backrest and bent to his head. It takes Harry a moment to realize just how often he’d been in the exact same position while talking to Narcissa and when he does he can’t help the loving smile that comes to his lips.

Draco rolls his eyes at him, the little git.

“I’ll start at the beginning, alright? My beginning.” Harry nods expectantly. “Right. Well, Mother has always told me about you. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know about you. It’s always been Mother, Father, and Dad, only dad was away and we wouldn’t see him for a while. And Addie. I’ve always had a big sister,” he says, smiling fondly and sparing her a look.

Harry looks too and meets Narcissa’s eyes in the process. She looks at them both lovingly and Harry can only imagine what is going through her head at the sight.

“Mother put a secrecy charm on me,” Draco continues, and Harry frowns a bit at the bitterness that comes through. “I hated it. I didn’t understand at first why I couldn’t talk to anyone about my dad and my big sister, and then when I did I got so angry with Mother. I think I didn’t speak to her for a whole week.”

“Draco…”

He doesn’t know what to say after that, can’t imagine what it must have cost Narcissa to make such a sacrifice and have her son resent her. But he also understands him, of course. It would have felt like a punishment for Draco.

“I hated it, Dad. I still do. I couldn’t even tell Hermione—” He pauses, takes a heavy breath and purses his lips in a familiar manner. Harry’s hand rests instinctively on his arm and Draco unconsciously leans closer. “I understand why she did it, but it wasn’t fair that I couldn’t tell anyone about half of my family. Not even you,” he says bitterly.

Draco looks at him beseechingly and Harry’s heart tugs painfully. “Oh, little dragon…”

“I tried to be your friend,” Draco says, a little wetly. Harry’s hand tightens on his arm. “After I learned about the secrecy charm, I became much closer to Father. I was angry at Mother for so long that I thought the best would be for me to try to be more like Father.” He looks down at his lap in shame. “I just wanted to be your friend. I wanted my dad, obviously, but I knew you wouldn’t be that man yet, so I thought I’d get the next best thing. And then…”

“I rejected you,” Harry says, heart breaking painfully. To think that he would’ve done anything to have been able to watch his son grow up and now to realize that he had missed the chance to at least be a part of his life because they had been stubborn children.

Draco looks up, eyes wet and lost and hurting and Harry can’t hold back anymore and he hugs him tightly.

“I chose you, little dragon. You’re my son because I chose you, I won’t ever reject you again. Not ever, you hear me? We’re family, Draco.”

Draco’s body shakes and Harry feels tears in his own eyes. He finds Narcissa across the room and they share all their pain with a single look. Their life was not easy at all. He was supposed to have gone to the past to make everyone’s lives better but he’s not sure he managed that with his own family.

“I know…” He sighs, squeezes Draco tightly and then sits close to him, arm wrapped around him and Draco’s head resting on his shoulder. “I didn’t have a good family life growing up, Draco. I think you know some of it but I never even told Ron or Hermione all of it. Not even your mother.” Draco looks up at that and Harry shrugs a bit. “Living dangerously is my thing,” he jokes, happy when he receives a fond eye roll in return. “My point is, I always imagined that one day someone would come and save me from the Dursleys and I’d come up with all sorts of scenarios about lost family members and fairy godmothers.” He chuckles ruefully, tightens his hold on Draco’s arm. “I know that even worse than being hated by the Dursleys would be the idea that one of those fantasized people would reject me after meeting me, that they would suddenly decide they didn’t want me at all.”

Draco makes a small noise at that, pained and broken, and Harry hurts for him.

“I…” He sighs heavily, rubs his free hand on his face. What a fuck up, he thinks. Everything is just royally bollocksed up. “I would be lying if I said that younger me was an idiot and completely wrong about that because you were a bit of a twat, little dragon,” he says lightly and is relieved when Draco snorts in response. “But as your dad, I don’t give a buggering fuck about how much of a git you were on the outside. I know you, Draco, I know the real you, and you’re caring and smart and loving and I’m so, so proud of you,” he says fervently.

Draco looks up carefully, doubtfully, searching for a tell. Harry gives him none.

“I’m proud of the man you’ve become, Draco. You didn’t always make the right choices and you didn’t have the best example to follow at all, which I am so sorry about. I wanted to be there for you growing up more than anything. I wanted to raise you with your mother by my side and teach you your first spell and hear you first word and listen to your first joke. I wanted to teach you how to be a man, a good man, like I know you’ve become without me, but I wanted to have been there to make your life easier, to teach you right from wrong earlier. I wanted to have spared you this,” he says, fingers tracing over the Dark Mark.

“It’s quite the ugly thing, isn’t it?” Draco jokes weekly, but Harry laughs nonetheless, relived beyond belief at this small show of forgiveness.

“It really is. And I really wish I could’ve been…” He pauses, lets out a shaky breath, looks down at his lap because he suddenly can’t face Draco’s bright eyes. “I wish I could’ve been an actual dad, Draco. More than anything. I wish I could’ve been more than just a ghostly memory for you.”

“You were more,” Draco says, voice quiet. His fingers play with the hem of Harry’s shirt and Harry can’t even process just how familiar that gesture is. Adhara does it all the time when she wants comfort. He thought he’d never get to see Draco doing something similar. “Mother showed me a lot of memories of you, and every year on my birthday she’d give me one of your pensive letters. It was always my favorite gift.”

Harry doesn’t have enough words reply to that, doesn’t think his heart will be able to stay in his chest for much longer with how big it feels.

It had been Narcissa’s idea. Since the day Draco was born and Harry had called him his little dragon she had started to refer to Harry as his dad like it was the foregone conclusion. And so she had decided that every son needed advice from his dad and she’d had the idea that Harry leave a collection of pensive memories for Draco so he’d know him as he grew up.

Harry had done it but there had been a part of him which had always thought that perhaps it would just be kinder if Draco never knew about him. He’d told Narcissa the day he left — just earlier that day actually, from his perspective — that he would understand if she never showed any of it to Draco, if she never spoke about him.

She’d clearly disregarded his words.

“I know I let you down, dad,” Draco says brokenly. Harry feels a sharp pang in his chest and starts to protest but Draco beats him to it. “I did. I know I did,” he says more firmly. “I was angry at Mother and I was angry at you, and I was a brat and a complete prick through most of my teenage years. I ignored Mother’s advice and even though I was always so excited to see your new memory on my birthday it was always like… Like you were an idea, almost. You were my dad but you weren’t there and the real you hated me so much that… I don’t know. I couldn’t wait to hear from you but at the same time I hated you a lot because you weren’t my dad yet. You know?”

Harry nods, guilt and sorrow twirling around his stomach and making him nauseated with regret. He’s afraid that if he tries to speak now he’ll throw up so he stays quiet and holds Draco tighter.

He’s missed so much. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to make up for it.

“I tried to be better though. I tried, dad.” He keeps playing with the stitching of Harry’s shirt, running his fingers up and down the seam. “I didn’t want to get marked, I swear I didn’t. Father brought that monster home and he was going to hurt Mother and I had to. I had to.” He shakes his head, then says bitterly, “He did hurt her, in the end. He hurt all of us. At least she drove him mad,” he adds in a proud undertone.

Harry snaps his eyes to Narcissa who is not so surreptitiously listening in to their conversation, Adhara asleep in her lap. She merely sends him a bland look while Harry very calmly asks, “What do you mean?”

Draco snorts wryly. “Mother would never break. Whenever the Dark Lord decided to punish Father or me by using her, she wouldn’t make a sound.”

“With the Cruciatus?” Harry asks, working very hard to keep the dangerous tone out of his voice so he won’t break Draco’s flow.

Draco nods. “Yeah. It drove him mad. She wouldn’t scream no matter what, wouldn’t make a sound. She’d just say she was a Black whenever he’d get irritated.”

Narcissa’s eyes never leave his, and she merely raises an eyebrow when Harry mouths ‘We’re discussing this later.’

“Your mother is an incredible woman,” he says, which is absolutely true but he also wants to walk across the room and shake the living daylights out of her proud head because he is certain that Draco didn’t witness all of it and that of what he did he’s keeping a lot of the details to himself.

It makes his blood boil and he kind of wishes he could go back in time again just to be able to strangle Voldemort to death for hurting his family.

“Yes,” Draco agrees, but something in his tone makes Harry’s ears perk up.

“You’ve made up, haven’t you? You’re not still angry with her?” he quietly asks, hoping that Narcissa is above putting a listening spell on them.

Draco hesitates for just a moment before sighing. “I was. For a long time I was. First because of you, then when I got older because of father. I… I was angry she married him knowing he was a Death Eater, knowing that it would be expected of me to follow into his steps. If she hadn’t… She knew everything that was going to happen, dad. All of it. And she never said a thing, never gave me a single hint,” he says, bitterness slipping through.

“You know she couldn’t, Draco. I made her swear an oath. And even if she could, she wouldn’t have done it.”

Draco sneers. “To spare me.”

“Yes,” Harry heartily agrees. “ _Yes_ , Draco. My biggest regret, after leaving you and your mother, is to have told her everything I did.”

Draco looks up at him disbelievingly. Harry eyes Narcissa again and finds her looking at them intently, face stoic and posture rigid. He sighs. She’s hearing the whole thing.

Harry talks to Draco but his eyes never leave his wife’s.

“I told your mother almost everything that would happen in her future, Draco. I told her about her marrying your father and watching you become a Death Eater and hosting Voldemort in her house for years. She knew who would die, she knew who was a traitor, she knew I’d grow up with horrible people and know nothing about our world.”

“But still—”

“No buts, Draco. That was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life, my biggest mistake. I don’t think you truly understand what I did to your mother, to the woman I love with all my heart.” Narcissa’s eyes soften a bit at that and she shakes her head like she wants to dismiss his guilt but he keeps going. “I made it so that she would know everyone’s fate and be unable to change a thing, be completely powerless. She couldn’t have a choice about her own life, about who she would marry. She couldn’t protect you from what she knew was coming, Draco. Your mother had to watch you grow more and more into your father, knowing that it would only lead you to bad choices and a lot of pain, no matter how much she tried to make it otherwise.”

He doesn’t say that he shouldn’t be forgiven, doesn’t say that it haunts him to have done that to her, even more now that he knows she’s suffered more than he’d thought because of it, that she never had the best relationship with their son because of him.

He thinks Draco hears his words anyways.

Draco makes a distressed sound and Harry tilts his head at Narcissa, silently asking her to join them.

She leaves Adhara curled up in a blanket and all but leaps off the floor, her steps fast as she makes her way over, heels clicking along the hardwood.

She sits on Draco’s other side and hesitates for only a moment before she wraps him in her arms. She sends Harry a grateful look and he smiles sadly at her, regretful and pained.

“The moment I went back in time, Draco, I knew nothing I did would change a thing. Nothing _could_ change a thing. Your mother and I, we fell in love, and we had Addie, but that couldn’t stop the fact that she still had to marry Lucius. It had already happened, so it had to happen. It’s just the way things go.”

He sighs, kisses the top of Draco’s head, shares a look with Narcissa. He would give almost everything to make it so he’d been able to keep his family together, so he’d been able to say fuck it and change time. But that wasn’t how the laws of Nature worked. No matter how much he’d have tried, they would always end up where they were now.

“Imagine, little dragon, that it was the other way around. Imagine that you had all this knowledge about our future, that you knew how much pain and suffering we’d go through. Would you tell us? Do you think we had a right to know our future?”

Draco frowns a bit like he wants to say yes but Harry continues.

“What if it was Hermione? Would you have told her that she was destined to go through so many hurdles in life? That she would have to Obliviate her parents, starve and freeze for months on the run, be tortured and have her arm carved out?” Draco makes another sound of distress, curls in on himself. Harry makes his voice softer, even as he digs the knife in deeper. “Would you condemn her like I did the woman I love? Would you make my mistake? Would it be fair?”

Draco shakes his head over and over and then throws his arms around his mother, holding her for dear life. Narcissa’s eyes fall close in relief and Harry can see the burden she’d been carrying around for two and a half decades slowly ebb away.

“I’m sorry, Mum. I didn’t realize… I’m so sorry.”

Narcissa’s voice is a soft whisper as she runs a hand through his hair. “It’s alright, dragon, it’s alright. You know I’m sorry things couldn’t have been different. I just wanted for you and your sister to have the best possible life and— well. I tried.”

Harry caresses her cheek and she leans into it, eyes closing for a moment. He can feel her relief, can see the tension leaving her shoulders little by little as if adjusting to newfound weightlessness after a long time of restriction, watches as the lines on her face smooth over some, the corners of her mouth no longer pinched.

He smiles softly, pleased beyond measure to be able to bring Narcissa and Draco closer. There’s a small ball of pride growing in the pit of his stomach as well. He didn’t have the opportunity to raise his son, but he’s able to do something to help him now, to teach him something, even, and it feels good. He feels like a proper father.

Draco wipes his eyes as he moves out of his mother’s embrace and settles further in between both of them. He looks smaller, somehow, almost like the small boy Harry didn’t quite see growing up.

“You did your best, Mum. I know you couldn’t say anything, it’s just… It was so frustrating, you know. It made me angry for so long.”

Narcissa nods but doesn’t say anything and Harry thinks that she’s doing her very best not to break down. He runs his hand through the hair on the nape of her neck, softly massaging the muscle as he does so. He feels even more of the tension leaving her as she relaxes further into his caress.

Draco sighs, thumb rubbing his index and middle fingers in such familiar patterns it’s almost hypnotizing. “I really was a bit of twat, wasn’t I?”

Harry can’t help but snort. He bumps his shoulder into Draco’s, never stopping his ministrations in Narcissa’s hair, and is pleased to find a self-deprecating smile on his son’s lips. It’s small, but it’s there, and that’s enough for Harry to know that they’ll be okay.

“A little bit, yeah.”

Narcissa smirks at his tone and rolls her eyes fondly, but then she too says, “You’re my son and you’re perfect, dragon.” Then pauses and adds, “Though there were moments where I was very tempted to follow your dad’s advice and spank you thoroughly.”

Draco gives them an affronted look, first to Narcissa then to Harry, as if the betrayal is even bigger coming from him. “You didn’t.”

Harry tries very hard to keep a straight face. “I most certainly did, young man.”

Narcissa breaks first, surprisingly, and Harry wonders if the whole situation has left her much more wired up than she’d let on. Quite probably.

She breaks out in laughter though, light and heartfelt and a little bit rusty, like she’d forgotten how to do it after so long. By the look of pure astonishment on Draco’s face, Harry thinks it might have been a very long time indeed since she’s let herself be this free.

The sound breaks his heart and heals it at the same time, and he thinks he’ll be facing conflicting emotions like these for a very long time.

It’s alright, though. If the reward he gets is his family’s happiness, then he’ll do it gladly.

* * *

Allie has kept Hawthorne Manor pristine over the last decades, though all the little bits and pieces Harry and Narcissa had added over the years have long since been removed and kept in storage. It all makes sense, of course. When Harry had first come to the house to perform the rituals he couldn’t very well be faced with pictures of his unknown family on the mantel.

Logically he knows this, but it still doesn’t help with the feeling of unease that spreads through him the longer he spends time in a house that is but also isn’t his.

They chat for a long time on the couch, the three of them pressed close together, sharing stories in soft voices, some accompanied by tears, others by laughter. When Adhara wakes up from her nap, Narcissa suggests they move to Grimmauld place and Harry sends her a grateful look.

Allie is happy to join them — apparently she and Kreacher are friends, of a sort, which is its own kind of baffling — and Adhara is very excited about having a new house to explore.

Harry spares a moment of panic thinking about her going into the rooms he hasn’t quite managed to clear out of dark objects, but Narcissa assures him that Allie can keep an eye on her.

Kreacher is oddly solicitous and respectful, offering them all sorts of food and drink, and keeps referring to Narcissa very pointedly as “the Mistress”, as if implying that she’s the mistress of the house, and to Draco as “the young Master”, which is not new because he’s done that since Harry first had Draco over, but now Harry hears the different meaning to it.

When he voices his thoughts to Narcissa she simply smiles enigmatically at him and says, “House-elves have a very strange type of magic, Harry. They can sense who belongs to the family.”

“Because you’re Blacks?”

She rolls her eyes then. “Because we’re Potters.”

Harry’s eyes widen and Narcissa merely gives him that fond look of hers for when he’s being a bit slow on the uptake.

Draco snorts. “Honestly, Dad.”

Harry narrows his eyes playfully at him but then Narcissa takes his hand and leads him to the library where she stops in front of the family tree. Draco steps up next to them and Narcissa calls for Allie to bring Adhara.

When they show up, Narcissa picks her up and stands within hands’ reach of the tapestry. Then she starts murmuring a long string of words, and Harry has a moment’s time to admire just how proficient his wife has become at wandless magic before Narcissa places Adhara’s little hands on the tapestry and it starts to shimmer, as if lifting off an invisibility cloak.

In the next second, Harry sees his own name showing up on the tapestry next to Narcissa’s, a gold line linking them, and then a silver line flowing from them to Adhara’s.

Adhara gasps and oohs and then says, “Pretty,” as if it sums everything up completely.

Harry stares and stares and stares, unable to take his eyes away from the proof that their family is _real_ , that the name next to Narcissa’s is Harry James Potter, not Harry Jonas Hawthorne, and his wife’s name is written as Narcissa Druella Potter. _Potter_ , not Black, not Malfoy.

He doesn’t know how, but somehow the magic _knows_. Their little ceremony made with a house-elf’s magical blessing made their union just as real as any other.

Harry has tears in his eyes and can’t really see the tapestry properly but he still can’t take his eyes off it.

He hears Narcissa’s voice distantly, calling for their son, and he steps forward to join his mother and sister. Narcissa murmurs another spell, similar yet slightly different, but Harry isn’t really able to focus too much on the words, still mesmerized by this gift.

Draco gasps and the sound makes Harry blink away the tears and focus on what made him do so.

When he follows Draco’s eyes, he sees that his name is right next to Adhara’s, a silver line connecting him to both Harry and Narcissa as well as Lucius, whose golden marriage line is broken with the divorce.

“What…” Draco’s voice is nothing more than a wondrous whisper as he runs his fingers over his name, following the line up to his parents, and then finally focussing on Harry’s reverently.

Harry takes a step closer to his family, puts his arms around them, and looks at the names of his two children for a very long time.

Adhara Lily Potter, 21.08.1977

Draco Lucius Potter-Malfoy, 5.06.1980

“Welcome home, Harry,” Narcissa says, conveying all her emotions with those three whispered words.

Harry hugs them tighter and doesn’t think he could ever let go.


	10. Epilogue

King's Cross is just as busy as ever, but it’s an entirely different perspective coming to the Hogwarts Express as a student than as a parent.Excitement is replaced by an almost crushing dread, and Harry feels entirely ridiculous — has been told, in fact, that he _is_ by Draco countless times, though Narcissa’s comments have been more reserved to the eye-rolling kind — but it’s something that can’t really be helped.

His little girl is not so little anymore and is going away to school forever and he won’t get to see her everyday, won’t get to ask her about her day and hear her voice as she tells him all about her adventures or see her facial expressions, so similar to his wife’s yet also with a distinct hint of mischief that is entirely Sirius. Sometimes Harry wonders if naming them after the same constellation was a good idea after all.

“You’ll write her. As much as you want, even. Though perhaps she won’t thank you if you do it every day,” Narcissa quips.

Harry refuses to look at her on principle, entirely affronted at her superior and careless attitude. Just because _someone_ has done this before…

He huffs. “It’s not the same,” he says, sullen.

Draco elbows him in the ribs but they both keep their eyes on the children, the four of them talking excitedly with Ron a few steps away. Harry is quite certain that Adhara is milking him for all the tips and tricks she can, and Ron, doting godfather that he is, must be falling for it like a sucker.

He frowns harder. He’ll curse Ron to oblivion, best friend or not, if he has anything to do with his daughter finding secret passages to Hogsmead before she’s at least a fourth year. No, _fifth_. There will be blood, that’s for certain.

“Stop frowning, old man. You’ll talk to her through the mirrors all the time.”

“I have also informed your father that being a visiting professor will also mean he sees her often,” Narcissa haughtily tells Draco.

Harry’s eyes narrow further.

“Ron is telling her about the Whomping Willow,” he growls, making a move to go over there and wring his neck before Draco summarily holds him back by keeping a surprisingly effective hold on his elbow. Hermione stifles a laugh completely unsuccessfully. 

“Dad. Just relax, alright, no one is trying to corrupt Addie. They all know very well there’d be hell to pay afterwards,” he adds, voice laced with humor.

Harry huffs again, but it’s with vicious satisfaction. “Damn right.”

Narcissa rolls her eyes. Harry doesn’t see it, but he just knows she does. He’s gotten pretty good at discerning those things after fourteen years together.

“You’re impossible,” she says, but he does turn to her then and her eyes are dancing with mirth, her lips forming a fond smile.

She’s utterly stunning, and Harry still has moments every day where he just stops and looks at her and wonders how his mess of a life worked out so well in the end.

He kisses her, longer than she’s usually comfortable with in public, but he knows she allows it because he needs the comfort today. It’s one of the many reasons why they work so well together.

“Is he freaking out that badly?” a familiar voice speaks up, and they break apart to meet Andromeda’s amused eyes as well as a disappearing flash of Teddy who runs off towards his cousins.

Harry wisely chooses to ignore her comment. “I was wondering if you were going to miss the train.”

Teddy is as similar to Tonks as Adhara is to Narcissa, which means that getting the boy ready on time to leave the house is nigh on impossible. Last year they did miss the train, which resulted in the longest grounding Harry has ever been witness to as well as a thoroughly effective teaching method where Teddy had to find his own way to Hogwarts and explain himself to McGonagall.

Andromeda raises an eyebrow. “He knows better by now.”

Draco snorts. “I’ll bet.”

Hermione smacks him lightly but Harry laughs along.

“How are the children?” Andromeda asks.

“Well, the oldest one is as calm as a mouse in a Basilisk’s lair,” Narcissa says. Harry glares at her taunt and she merely smirks at him. “Adhara is just as excited as she’s been for the whole summer, which is to say, I’ll be glad for a moment to breathe in peace.”

Harry joins in on the laugher though his heart clenches a bit at the reminder that he won’t have his little girl with him in just a few minutes.

He sighs, and Narcissa takes his hand and squeezes softly.

“Aries is excited for his sister but I don’t think he realizes yet how much he’ll miss her,” she adds softly.

Andromeda gives them a sympathetic look. “On the bright side, it’ll still be a few more years before he goes.”

“ _Four_ ,” Harry says. Too soon in his opinion, he doesn’t even want to think about it. At least now he’ll still have his little boy at home, so the house won’t feel so empty.

Aries had been a surprise baby, doubly more so than Adhara. Narcissa wasn’t old per Wizarding standards, but she wasn’t particularly young either, and, quite frankly, they had both been too preoccupied relearning each others’ bodies and losing themselves in their reunion that first night to think about any possible repercussions.

Clearly, fate had other plans for them. Aries had been born on the 1st of March, 2006, a whopping twenty-six years after his last child, who was also now the oldest, and twenty-nine years after his first child, now the middle one and only four years older than the youngest.

Yes, it was at moments like those where Harry chose to ignore the math and just focus on the present, for his own mental sanity.

But, surprise or not, their youngest son had been wanted and loved and cherished. Narcissa was as wonderful as Harry had always known her to be, Adhara as bossy, and Draco as caring.

Draco, after Harry and Adhara came back from the past and Narcissa revealed the tapestry to them, had seemed so immensely happy at being officially Harry’s son that it had shocked him a bit. Harry had had no idea that it would mean so much to him, though he supposes, in retrospect, it really should have. Harry is an orphan, he knows how important it is to belong and, though Draco was never technically one, he did grow up with one absent father.

It was Harry who had suggested it, something that surprised Narcissa so completely that Harry will never forget the look on her face.

“I would like to do the blood adoption thingy. For Draco,” he’d added when Narcissa had just looked at him, eyes wide and mouth parted. “You know, to make him part of my family magic, you said that was important, right? I mean, not that I don’t feel like he’s just as much my son as Adhara is. Daughter, I mean. Not Draco, he’s the son. But the magic thing, that’s a thing to do, right? Actually, can we even? ‘Cause Lucius is obviously a wizard and Draco already has his family magic so maybe he can’t have mine as well—”

“Yes,” Narcissa had said, finally stopping his nervous rambling. “Yes, it can be done. It’s… it’s the proper way,” she’d added, like it _meant_ something, another of those traditions which were so important to her.

Harry had smiled wider than he’d had in a long time. “Can I ask him?”

He’d asked, and the look on Draco’s face was another he wasn’t wont to forget any time soon.

And it had clearly worked in the end, not that he’d had any doubts about Narcissa’s proficiency with the potion, but the proof was quite obvious with Draco and Hermione’s two children.

Leo at six is a miniature Hermione, bushy hair and all, never mind that it’s platinum blonde, with eyes a startling and familiar emerald green, something the boy is incredibly proud of. Grandpa’s eyes, he calls them, opening them as wide as they go whenever some stranger on the street comments on them.

Cassiopeia, aged four, is the first Malfoy in who knows how many generations — a _lot_ , Draco repeatedly tells him, though it’s fond more than anything — with a mop of black hair. She, like Adhara, does pull it off when she lets it grow out, something Harry still hasn’t been inclined to do, and he thinks she’s the cutest thing with her wild hair and startling grey eyes always focused on a new book.

Aries, in comparison, has the misfortune of the Potter hair and Harry’s disinclination towards letting it grow out, so he looks a lot like a mini-Harry with grey eyes. Personality wise, however, the little tike is somehow the quietest child in the family. They have bets running, but Harry’s inclined to think it’s because Adhara’s personality just over-shines his and he couldn’t be bothered to fight her.

At least, he thinks, a good thing about Adhara going away to Hogwarts is that their son will probably come out of his shell a bit more.

Which is not enough to pull Harry out of his funk, so the sullen frown returns to his brows and he sighs again.

Narcissa chuckles and whispers in his ear. “Everything will be fine, don’t worry.” Then louder, “Teddy will look out for her.”

“Of course he will, she’s his favorite cousin,” Andromeda adds.

Draco pretends to be affronted for a minute before giving it up.

Hermione rolls her eyes fondly and squeezes Harry’s arms in support. “The war has been over for years, Harry. The virus has been eradicated, and everything pertaining to it destroyed. There’s nothing to worry about. Her Hogwarts years won’t be like ours in the least, I promise you.”

Harry takes in a deep, shuddering breath, and Narcissa’s hand squeezes his harder.

Hermione, brilliant best friend that she is, hit the nail right in the coffin. Harry has been terrified for years of his children facing the same sort of dangers he did, and it certainly hasn’t helped that he’s still a part-time Auror and a target for a number of Dark Wizards. And he’ll never stop being Harry Potter, a target in itself.

“She’ll be fine, Dad.”

Harry forces a smile for his son which quickly becomes genuine at the soothingly strong look in Draco’s eyes.

Draco was a friend before the time travel, a baby he barely got to know before he came back, and he’s become the sort of son that Harry is so proud to have. Perhaps it’s the fact that they’re so close in age — something which he had thought would be a problem yet is strangely not — but they have become closer than Harry is with any of his children.

Adhara is his little princess, and Aries is his little quiet and cuddly boy, but Draco holds a soft spot in Harry’s heart after having witnessed all he went through and who he became. Maybe it’s part guilty conscience of a semi-absent father, part pride at how strong he became. Regardless, even though Draco has made him a grandfather way, _way_ too prematurely — something which has Ron in stitches every time it comes up — Harry has a special type of fierce love for his son’s steady and comforting company.

So he lets his son reassure him, nods sharply, and is rewarded by a brilliant smile and a peck on the cheek from Narcissa.

The train whistles once, the five minute warning for last goodbyes, and the children come running back towards them.

Adhara crashes into Narcissa and holds her tight, and Aries makes his way over to Harry, sticking to his side quietly yet steadily. Harry puts his arm around him in comfort.

Narcissa pulls back, holds Adhara’s face in her hands, and whispers to her softly before kissing her forehead.

Harry’s next, and Adhara launches herself into his arms with just as much intensity, crushing him with her little arms. Aries, clearly feeling overtaken, moves quietly to his mother’s side.

“I’ll miss you Daddy.”

Harry breathes in her scent, her loose curls tickling his nose, and he holds her tighter for a second before pulling back.

“I’ll miss you too, Addie. But it’ll be great fun, you’ll see.” She looks up at him with his bright green eyes, full of excitement and wonder, and Harry feels his fears slowly seeping away. “You’ll love it, I just know it. Just don’t try to do everything just yet, yeah? There’ll be plenty of time for adventures.”

Adhara rolls her eyes fondly but she nods. He knows she’ll still try to do it, though, always looking for the next bit of excitement, but he has to learn to let her go.

It’s a slow process. He’s only been semi-proficient at it for about two minutes so he gives himself a discount.

“Off you go, then, and don’t forget to write back and let us know which house you’re in.”

She sends him a look which clearly says, ‘Isn’t it obvious, Dad?’ before running off with Teddy and waving back at them from the train.

And yes, perhaps it is, but that hat is sneaky, there’s never really a way to be sure, even after eleven years of raising the brat.

“One full body massage says Slytherin,” Narcissa coyly whispers in his ear.

Harry shivers, not only because his wife is a sex goddess but also because her voice does _things_ to him.

“Slytherin?! You do know your daughter, don’t you? She’s worse than I am.”

Narcissa snorts and gives him a condescending look. “Yes, I know her very well, and I know that we’ve caught her a lot fewer times than would be reasonable if she were an ordinary Gryffindor.”

Draco hums his agreement and Harry shakes his head.

He doesn’t care, truly, except to be sorry for whoever gets to be her Head of House, but he still maintains his conviction.

“You agree with me, don’t you buddy?” he says as he picks Aries up and cuddles him.

His youngest wraps his small arms around his neck and merely shrugs his shoulders with a noncommittal noise.

Harry’s fake-outraged gasp is drowned out by the train’s final whistle as it departs.

“You’ll see, just wait until tomorrow and you’ll be eating your words,” he teases.

“I rather think I’ll be too busy getting a very thorough massage, dear.”

Draco splutters. “Mother!”

Narcissa blinks innocently at him and Harry can’t contain his laughter. “Yes, dear?”

“Too much— Children, mother! Children!”

“Hmm, yes, perhaps we should let Aries spend the day with his brother tomorrow so we can properly enjoy the massage,” she says, hand waving calmly as their daughter is driven away, the corner of her lip slightly tensed as she tries to control her smile.

Harry waves their daughter away more enthusiastically and suddenly the dread he’s been feeling over the past few months is gone. Adhara will be fine, he’ll be there next week for his weekly class, and his family will continue to be just like this. Perfectly happy if a little bit ridiculous at times.

Narcissa leans into Harry and he wraps his free arms around her, kisses her head, basks in the smell of sunshine in her hair, then kisses her neck where starry nights offer a balm to his beating heart.

With his wife on one arm, youngest child on the other, and oldest just next to them, he can’t imagine that life will ever be anything other than perfectly messy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it. I hope you like this little epilogue, and thank you so much for all your lovely comments <3


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